


a sun-drenched meadow brimming with wildflowers

by softestpunk



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Fluff and Smut, M/M, all the feelings, and as entertaining for Shay, as you might expect, they can read each other's minds, this is as much of a disaster for Haytham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:29:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21659818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softestpunk/pseuds/softestpunk
Summary: S’pose it can’t be helped that he’s English, but my God is he stunning.AU in which soulmates are identified by their ability to read each other's thoughts... and Shay and Haytham, as we know, are soulmates.Also Haytham is awkward (shock!) Shay is horny (horror!) and they're both idiots with a lot of feelings (I can hear you gasping with surprise).
Relationships: Shay Cormac/Haytham Kenway
Comments: 77
Kudos: 213





	1. Chapter 1

_Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies._

\- Aristotle

Haytham

_S’pose it can’t be helped that he’s English, but my God is he stunning_.

I turn on my heel so quickly my cloak whips around dramatically, shocked at what I’ve just overheard in the distinctive melodic accent of our newest recruit…

… and find him deep in amicable conversation with Christopher Gist, apparently oblivious to my presence and certainly not close enough to overhear so clearly.

Shay glances in my direction, a small, polite smile flitting over his features, but his attention does not wander far from the conversation and he’s laughing again a moment later.

_He’s looking at me again. Hard to tell if he wants to fuck me or kill me, but it’s one or the other._

And then: _might take the chance and find out later_.

Horror dawns over me as I realise I’m hearing Shay’s thoughts, my stomach tying itself up in knots like I’ve never experienced before.

It only gets worse as Shay stiffens abruptly, his attention snapping away from Gist and toward me.

 _You heard that_.

 _Yes_ , I think, desperate for another explanation to come up, hoping against hope that I’m having a nervous breakdown and not… not…

_Oh, shite._

Oh no.

_Well, thank Christ it’s you and not any of the rest of them._

I suppose Shay intends this to be flattering, but I can’t help but feel damned by faint praise.

 _I do mean it as a compliment_ , he adds, and now that I understand what I’m experiencing I can hear laughter. _You’re very handsome, sir_.

He seems so _pleased_ with this turn of events.

Meanwhile, I am still reeling from the enormity of what I now know, such a dramatic shift in my reality that I can barely bring myself to think it.

Shay Cormac is my soulmate.

I’d never believed that being able to read my soulmate’s thoughts would be so _literal_ as other mated pairs I’d met insisted it was. This was not merely a deep understanding of another person.

I could hear Shay inside my head. Just like I’d always been told I would if I was lucky enough to find him.

I’d been expecting…

I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting.

Shay prods at the edges of my mind like a cat nudging my hand to have its head scratched.

_Are you very disappointed, sir?_

Asked with such soft sincerity. My lack of excitement has wounded him, and I realise that I cannot afford to get off on the wrong foot with a man I will be tied to, one way or another, until one of us dies.

 _I am not disappointed_ , I think firmly, though I can see why he might worry. In this new world without nobility I am the closest thing it is possible to be to aristocracy, and he a simple sailor. Accomplished, yes, and judging from Monro’s reports anything but _simple_ —but far below my station.

And he does not yet know enough of me to know that this has never worried me before.

No, I am not disappointed.

I am at sea.

 _Forgive me,_ I think, very deliberately. _I need a moment_.

As I force myself to stand and walk away, affection blooms in my chest, but I know it is not my feeling—it is Shay’s, projected at me.

Either he has a great deal more control over what he shows me, or a great deal _less_.

The feeling is so strong that I pause for a moment, turning back to look at him again, and find him smiling a soft, encouraging smile at me, understanding curling its way around me like a warm blanket.

He will give me the time I need, and I have never been more grateful.

I marvel at this man who can feel such incredible warmth toward me within minutes of meeting me for the first time, and quicken my steps toward my lodgings.

Shay

It takes every ounce of dignity I have not to outright _skip_ my way to Master Kenway once I hear the faintest _I’m ready_ from him, tickling the back of my mind like a duck feather.

Instead I take the rooftops, working off nervous energy before I slip through his window. He startles, staring wide-eyed at me, and I can’t stop myself grinning at him.

A soulmate.

 _My_ soulmate.

Never thought I’d find one. Never thought I deserved one.

“I imagined you would come to the door,” Master Kenway says, setting aside the quill he’s holding and dusting the fresh ink with powder.

“I will, next time,” I promise. “If that’s what you want.”

 _So eager to please_ , I hear, and I don’t think he meant to let that slip.

I can hardly hide my feelings from him, so I see no point in trying.

“I want you to be pleased with me,” I admit. Of course I do. Master Kenway is clever and handsome and _mine_ , and I never want him to regret that, not for a moment.

“I am not displeased with you,” he says. “This is simply… unexpected.”

“Is it that you’ve never been with a man, sir?” I ask, wanting to put him at ease. “I don’t mind, I’ll show you.”

Master Kenway’s embarrassment hits me so hard that my own cheeks flush with blood.

“Too forward?”

He winces.

“Perhaps a little?”

He’s still glowing with bright red embarrassment and I feel guilty for doing that to him.

I’m made to love this man with my whole heart, and I need to start by understanding him.

“Were you expecting a woman, sir?” I ask softly.

This is one thing I can’t change, and I need to know now what I should expect from him. Maybe he’ll never love me like I want to love him, maybe we’re meant to be the best of friends but nothing else.

There’s more than one way to have a soulmate, after all.

“Expecting, perhaps,” he admits, tapping long, elegant fingers on his desk. “But please let me assure you that I have no objections to you being a man.”

I can’t stop myself laughing at the phrasing. “Aye, well, just as well, because you’d have a helluva time tryin’ to button me into a bodice.”

Master Kenway raises an eyebrow. “I do enjoy a challenge,” he says, the faintest hint of a smile making his lips twitch.

I laugh, relieved that he does have a sense of humour under all that silk and gold thread.

“Yes, but few people understand it,” he says, and I can feel the first bud of hope welling up in him.

“S’pose we’ll have to get used to knowing what we’ve said aloud.”

Master Kenway fiddles with something on his desk. “You were so pleased,” he says. “I must have given you the impression of being unforgivably cold.”

“Not unforgivably,” I say, though I think my relief betrays me. “You… you’re…”

_Mine._

Master Kenway’s gaze snaps to me. Must be careful about thinking that, he’s the sort of man who isn’t anyone’s.

“Sorry, sir,” I say, trying to sound it.

But he _is_ mine, and I’ve never had anything like him, and I want him to be happy about it.

Master Kenway’s lips twitch again.

“There isn’t a sorry bone in your body,” he says.

A dirty thought flits through my head and I catch another little flush of embarrassment in return.

“You are sincerely attracted to me, aren’t you?” he asks, surprised.

Can’t see why that comes as a surprise. He must turn heads wherever he goes.

“Aye, sir,” I say.

“I do _not_ turn heads wherever I go,” he says, like it’s an insult.

“Oh, I think you do, sir. Tall, handsome, rich. People look at you, they must do. You just haven’t noticed.”

Something in him relaxes. He believes me.

“You’re not as excited as I am, sir,” I say, trying to keep my tone even. That’s at the core of this awkwardness between us, and I want to tell him it’s okay, that I’ll wait, that I understand that he’s not so desperate to be loved as I am and I’ll earn it, if I can. I’ll do anything.

“No, but it isn’t because of you,” he says. “It’s because of me.”

A sudden rush of pain and guilt hits me—not my pain, or my guilt, but _his_.

And then it shuts off just as suddenly, like a heavy black bible being thumped closed by a priest tired of silly questions from an ignorant little boy.

The absence leaves me reeling, heartsick, guts twisting at the unexpected loss. I’d only had him for a few hours and now he was _gone_ and it felt like all the air had rushed out of the room.

The next thing I know, Haytham’s hands are on me, a litany of _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ in my mind, strong fingers curling around my shoulders, steadying me as the room stops spinning.

“I didn’t like that,” I mutter, surprised by how it’d felt.

My throat closes up at the thought that I’ve just had the barest taste of what it’d be like if he died on me, and I understand now why one half of a bonded pair doesn’t last long after they lose the other.

It was like having half my soul torn out of my body and even now the loss hurts, even though he’s back and _sorry_. So sorry.

He didn’t mean it.

“I didn’t like it, either.” Haytham confesses, sheepish. “I didn’t… realise.”

Aye, he didn’t. Of course not. I didn’t, either, but I never would have been able to shut him off like that.

Whatever he’s hiding, it must be important. I won’t pry.

“I won’t pry,” I say out loud, confirmation in case he doesn’t hear it past all the noise in both of our heads.

Haytham sighs, hands still on my shoulders, and my mind calms bit by bit as I feel his presence seep back in, thoughts like gentle fingers brushing against my own.

I’m getting the hang of not sending him every inane little thing that pops into my head, and I know I’ll have to work on that. He’s so much cleverer than me, he doesn’t want to hear it.

“I’m afraid I have to ask you for more than not prying,” Haytham says. “I have to ask you for time. And to understand that I may never be what you want me to be. I might not be capable of it.”

“I just want…”

What do I want?

I’ve never given it any thought beyond _someone to love_.

He could be that. That wouldn’t be hard at all. I could love him, I’m meant to.

When I meet his eyes again he’s looking at me like he’s never seen another person before.

“I wish it all seemed so simple to me,” he says quietly. “You want this. You _sincerely_ want this, don’t you?”

I nod. I’ve lost so much but this is one thing I can have, and I want it. Even if it’s not perfect.

Haytham Kenway is my soulmate, and I want him. I want to keep him and call him my own, that’s all.

… well, I wouldn’t mind undressing him and—

His embarrassment stops me again. Must learn not to send _that_ kind of thought to him, at least until he’s ready to hear it.

 _I do find you very attractive,_ he thinks, reassuring me.

I grin at him. Good. So he should, I _am_ very attractive.

“And humble, too,” Haytham says aloud, smiling wryly. “Haytham, is it?”

 _Oops_.

I try to feel a little contrite, but I can’t. I like his name. It sounds so natural, but I’ve never heard it before.

“It’s Arabic,” he says. “I know, I know, I look as English as they come and you’re right, though I will point out that my father was Welsh, if it makes you feel any better.”

I like that, too. I like him much better now that he’s starting to relax.

“Gist says he was an Assassin.”

“He was, and a pirate,” Haytham smiles wryly. “He would have approved highly of you.”

“Wish I could have known him,” I say, and I mean it so sincerely I could burst.

“So do I,” Haytham says, sad again. “The name means young eagle, which I think makes us a beautifully matched pair, don’t you?”

He’s trying. I could love him for that alone.

My name means hawk, and he can’t have just known that off the top of his head. Must’ve looked it up before now.

“I did,” he confirms. Still haven’t gotten my rambling thoughts under control, but I will. “I’d never heard your name before, either.”

So he was interested in me, before we ever met.

“A fledgling Assassin tumbled out of their nest and right into the lap of one of my most trusted friends? Of course I was interested in you. Colonel Monro was very fond of you, Shay.”

My whole insides light up when he calls me by my name. Haytham’s face changes, too. He felt that.

I try very, _very_ hard not to think about how good being able to feel each other’s feelings would be under different circumstances.

Judging by the look on Haytham’s face, I don’t entirely succeed.

He’s pretty when he blushes, though. Just as well, or we’d be in real trouble.

And he is _blushing_ , not recoiling in horror at the thought.

“You asked me if I was very disappointed that it was you,” Haytham says. “I begin to think I ought to ask if you find yourself disappointed by me.”

I shake my head, pushing the thought toward him that I’m not, that I couldn’t be, that I’m thrilled to have him and I don’t mind us taking our time.

I’d waited so long to hear Liam’s voice in my head and I hadn’t really believed I never would until he shot me.

“Liam O’Brien?” Haytham asks.

 _Dammit_.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he says. “It isn’t easy to control.”

Aye, but _he_ can do it, and I can’t.

“You will get the hang of it,” Haytham soothes, squeezing my shoulder where one hand’s still resting on it.

I want contact, too. I ache to touch him, but I know I’m already trying his patience as it is.

Haytham takes my hand and curls his fingers around it without having to be asked, and I look up at him in awe.

“I didn’t realise it was as bad for you as it was for me,” he says, sheepish.

The relief of having contact with him is enough to give me a chance to get my thoughts in order, gently herding some of them into a part of my mind that isn’t quite so open to him. Not walling it off—I won’t risk shutting down like before, I’m not sure I could take it twice—but marking out boundaries.

I don’t know if it helps, but I feel less scattered when I meet his eyes again.

“Yes,” I say. “Liam O’Brien. Did you… know him, sir?”

Liam would’ve mentioned that, wouldn’t he? We’d barely been apart in five years.

“By reputation,” Haytham says. “I… there was… someone for me, as well. Who I told myself I couldn’t hear simply because we were too culturally distant to be compatible like this.”

A pang of longing slips through and curls around my heart.

“So you are not alone in being very surprised,” he continues. “I am not upset. I was simply not expecting another chance.”

I think I’m starting to understand him now. We both have jagged edges better avoided.

I close my eyes and commit the way his hand feels against mine to memory.

“I have to make preparations to leave,” I say. There are bigger things at stake than my own happiness.

“You do,” Haytham agrees. “I won’t delay you any longer. But we _will_ speak of this again, I promise you.”

We haven’t got much choice and I’m not entirely sure Haytham really understands that yet, that this is permanent, it’s not going away no matter how not-ready he is for it.

But I keep the thought to myself, and this time I feel like I’ve succeeded.

I can be patient, even if I don’t seem it right now.

“Do I get a kiss, sir?” I tease. Can’t hurt to push my luck, and I like it when he blushes.

My whole world shudders to a halt as he _does_ it, a dry, chaste peck on the lips that feels like a grand, sweeping gesture of affection from him, and I can feel how shy he is about it as he backs off.

I grin at him as his fingers slip away from mine, backing up toward the window and showing off a little as I vault out of it.

Aye, I can be patient for him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday Haytham, I got you a Shay :D

Haytham

Shay’s mind is quiet while we each travel separately to meet Captain Cook—Order business prevents me from sailing with him, and I am secretly grateful for the distance.

Not because I do not _like_ Shay, but because I have no idea what to do about him yet.

He still hovers in the back of my thoughts, contently sailing his ship, revelling in the scent of sea air, and there is a sea shanty stuck in my head as I step onto Cook’s ship, greeted warmly by the always-enthusiastic captain.

As soon as the _Morrigan_ is within sight of the _Pembroke_ , the connection between Shay and I roars back into full force and I cannot help being flattered by his excitement.

He likes me. He likes me a great deal more than I deserve and I am unsure whether I should tell him, lay bare the ugly truth of my past and my present.

Eventually, it will come out, but whether now or later will make some difference.

Shay thinks I do not understand the permanence of this situation and what he does not realise is that I _do_ and I cannot stop feeling as though I will thoroughly ruin him and he will not be able to escape me.

Shay radiates good-natured cheer as I introduce him to Captain Cook, and Captain Cook radiates a subtle flush of barely-contained lust.

I have never been more wholly, instantly jealous in my life and it takes every ounce of willpower to stop myself sidling closer to Shay.

He glances sideways at me with the tiniest smirk and flirts openly with Cook.

I deserve nothing less, since I have so utterly failed to demonstrate that I am quite capable of satisfying his needs.

A thrill of arousal ripples through our bond as Shay takes the wheel of the _Pembroke_.

_Really?_

Shay does not even have the good grace to be bashful about deriving no small amount of unmistakably sexual pleasure at the power of the vessel he’s just been put in command of, and lets me feel the tug of it just below his navel as we get underway.

It becomes obvious quickly that Shay is an exceptional sailor and a natural leader and I wonder if I should be worried for my position as Grand Master.

_You can keep it, sir_.

Well, that’s a relief.

Shay laughs at me in his head and while I’d be insulted if it was anyone else, I find it easy to enjoy it coming from him.

Cover from the storm veils the French fleet in a ghostly mist that sends tendrils of unease tingling down my spine. I am not un-tested in battle, but naval warfare is new to me and having to rely on so many other people to run the ship sets my nerves on edge.

Shay is so steadily calm that I am in awe of him, even as cannonballs start hitting the water mere inches away from the ship.

Even as he barks orders to fire and ready for daring manoeuvres, he takes the time to reach out to me through our bond, curling the mental equivalent of a fist around the back of my collar to keep me centred and upright, steady in front of Gist, Cook, and the others, and while my first instinct is to fight him off, I push it aside and let him.

It is much, much easier to handle the heat of battle with Shay’s certainty standing in place of my own.

When the _Experto Crede_ materialises out of the mist like a phantom, my blood runs cold.

A note of query curls around my mind, from Shay, and I’m not sure how to explain myself.

_We have history_ , I think at him, but the truth is that my feelings toward Adéwalé are what they are precisely because we do _not_ have history.

Shay pushes a tender little wave of understanding toward me, and for a moment I am taken quite off-guard by his capacity for compassion.

When he agrees that the fireships are our first priority, I cannot help but feel relieved.

Shay is absolutely relentless as the battle continues, giving no quarter and running headlong into every engagement and even _enjoying_ himself, a thrill of pleasure shared with me every time he sends another ship into the depths.

How quickly his allegiances have turned. Once a privateer for the French who struck fear into the hearts of any English vessel he encountered, now taking advantage of every tactical weakness ruthlessly, without any hint of mercy.

He is _glowing_ when the rest of the British fleet arrives—though there is little work left for them to do, the few splintered remains of the French already turning tail with haste.

The pleasure he takes in this, the obvious satisfaction of a job well done under battle conditions, makes me wonder if perhaps he will handle the darkness I have been so hesitant to show him in me rather better than I gave him credit for.

_Tell me about Adéwalé_.

_Later_ , I promise. My feelings are tangled and complicated and now is not the time to let Shay unravel them.

But perhaps there will be a time, after all.

Shay

_That is not how you spell manoeuvres. M-A-N-O-E-U-V-R-E-S._

I laugh as I strike through the misspelled word and copy it out as Haytham spelled it for me.

_Evenin’ to you, too_ , I think, thrilled that he’s reaching out to me. I was sorry to leave him with Cook, but he’s a busy man and we both have things to do.

_You were thinking so hard about it I was afraid you might expire from the effort_.

I chuckle again. He’s joking, this is his sense of humour, and I like it.

_Thank you for saving me from an untimely death, sir. Very gentlemanly of you._

_As we’ve already discovered I would be quite inconvenienced by your death._

I drop my quill into the ink pot and sit back, finished with my log for the evening and eager for more of Haytham’s company if he’s in the mood for it.

_Captain Cook is very taken with you_ , Haytham adds.

_I know_.

He was, and he didn’t bother to hide it. Good for Haytham to see that, I think.

_You like it when people are obviously attracted to you_ , Haytham thinks, more an observation than a question.

_Don’t you?_

_Historically, I have been oblivious to it._

Ah.

He did say as much, when we first met. That he didn’t turn heads. I knew that couldn’t be the truth, and this is confirmation.

_Tell me about Adéwalé?_

There’s a risk I’ll scare him off askin’, but I have to take it. This is what I’m here for, after all. To confide in, to act as a comfort, as a _partner_. The other half of his soul.

Haytham hesitates, and for a moment I worry I can feel him retreating back to the background hum we’ve settled into when we’re not together, but then he surges forward again, the mental equivalent of taking a breath to speak.

_Adéwalé was my father’s first mate and best friend, and when my father died I always half-expected him to come for me and take me away and raise me as a pirate. A stupid, juvenile fantasy, but I have never quite shaken the feeling that my life might have been very different if he had shown me any of his famous loyalty_.

Oh.

I’m not sure Haytham means to let me feel his grief, the lingering distress of a ten-year-old boy who’s just lost everything, but I feel it anyway and my heart breaks for him, and I’d give anything to be where he is and wrap my arms around him and tell him it’s all right.

I’d give anything to let him cry like he’s never been allowed to.

My stomach hurts at the thought of a tiny Haytham waiting for a rescue that never came.

_You can come be a pirate with me_ , I offer.

A wry laugh echoes through the bond.

_I’m not certain I’m cut out for it_.

_I’d be gentle with you_ , I promise, letting the hint of a smirk slip through as well just to feel Haytham blush.

He doesn’t disappoint me, mentally squirming with embarrassment.

I’ll have to tease him into bedding me. He needs to know it’s nothing to be afraid of.

I know he wants me—unlike him, I can always tell. He just needs a little coaxing.

_What makes you think I want you to be gentle?_

Oh. _Oh_.

I laugh aloud, grinning up at the ceiling. _Finally_ , we’re starting to get somewhere.

_Maybe I like gentle_.

_Perhaps,_ Haytham allows. _I suppose I’ll find out._

Regret that we’re so many miles away from each other wells up in the pit of my stomach. He’s ready now, he would have come to bed with me and he would have been happy about it, but we’re too far apart and I can’t know if he’ll be in this mood next time I see him.

It’s just the first time. I’m never not in the mood, but Haytham’s different. We’ll need a little magic, like this, the first time.

_I’m sorry I’m so much work_ , Haytham sends, sincere regret in his tone.

I let him feel the happy little wave of warmth that blooms in my chest when I think of him.

_I like a challenge_ , I send back, remembering what he said to me, and feel him smile.

_You’re rising admirably to it_ , he thinks, and flushes with embarrassment before I can even tease him over _rising_.

He’s getting to know me.

_I pride myself on rising very admirably, sir,_ I think just before there’s a knock on my cabin door.

He is a challenge, but nothing worth having ever came easy, did it?


	3. Chapter 3

Haytham

A flood of arousal washes over me as I wake, hazy, engulfed in darkness and aware that it is hours yet until sunrise, but inexplicably flushed with lust.

A gasp in Shay’s voice, in the back of my head, gives me a momentarily horrifying clue about what I’m feeling.

_It’s the middle of the night_ , I think at him before my half-asleep brain can think better of it.

_Thought you were asleep_.

_I was_.

Guilt. He didn’t intend to disturb me, that was why he waited.

I have determined—and I think he understands as well—that while much spills over when we’re physically near each other, distance requires either a strong intention or a strong feeling, or some combination of both.

It makes perfect sense, and Shay is clever—of course he understands, and it is sweet that he tried not to bother me.

_Don’t stop on my account_.

I won’t deny him this. I have denied him what I am increasingly sure he does sincerely want—my touch—but I will not stop him from enjoying his own.

A moment’s hesitation, and then a tingle of pleasure seeps through to me. Shay is holding back, but I will not be able to ignore it.

A curse escapes me as I gather up the suddenly excessive fabric of my nightshirt and curl my own fingers around my rapidly-hardening cock, letting Shay feel the thrill of pleasure in response to his own.

Giddy happiness fills my mind—Shay’s giddy happiness—and for a moment I want nothing more than to make him feel like this always. The sensation could easily become addictive.

His mind is open to me now, more fully than it ever has been even over such a distance, and it’s as though I can feel everything he feels.

An image of myself settling beside him in his narrow bunk, batting his hand away and replacing it with my own fills my mind—not _my_ image, not something from my own mind, but something from Shay’s.

My own cock suddenly feels foreign in my hand, as though I really am touching him instead.

Images have been rare and difficult between us until now, too complex, I thought, too much to share, but as I relax and let him in it only becomes more vivid, and as my eyes fall closed it is as if I’m there with him.

I taste the heat of his mouth, as yet unknown to me in the real world, and smell the salt air on his skin, and the fingers teasing me are no longer my own, but rough and warm and new.

Shay’s laughter echoes in my mind, my chest filling with simple joy at touching and being touched in return, at the sharing of pleasure with someone who so obviously enjoys it, and takes pleasure in _my_ pleasure, who in his own head cannot decide where to rest his hands and instead makes an effort to touch every inch of me.

He shows me how much he likes to be kissed, and where he likes to be touched, and that he has no particular desire for either of us to be gentle, judging by the way he digs his fingers into my flesh, pulls at my hair, bites at my lip and thrills when I offer him the image of doing the same, of having him under me here in my bed and sucking a bruise into his neck where his collar won’t quite hide it.

_You want me_ , he thinks with such enthusiasm that I cannot help being flattered by it.

_Of course I want you_.

The thought slips out, but it is true and I will not take it back or put caveats on it.

Shay’s happiness is blinding and I spend on my own belly still bathed in the warm glow of it, feeling the peak of his orgasm at the same moment as though it was my own.

I am completely, _utterly_ finished, exhausted down to my bones in a way I never have been under the touch of my own hand.

Shay lingers in the back of my mind, happily relaxed and equally spent.

_Do you do that a lot?_ I think lazily, reaching out to him, the haze of lust and affection making me unwilling to lose touch so soon.

_Been avoiding it for you,_ Shay admits. _I really wasn’t trying to wake you._

_I don’t want you to change for me_ , I think with some measure of horror. The last thing I want to do is break Shay.

_Having a little common decency isn’t changing,_ Shay sends back, indignant.

No, of course it isn’t. Shay already treats me like a lover, or perhaps someone he’s courting. He is kind to me, in a hundred little ways I have never thought to seek kindness, and I wonder what he must think of me and my apparent lack of consideration for him.

_I know you’re scared you’ll be bad for me,_ Shay thinks, nakedly honest. _You won’t be._

He’s so certain of this, and I’m so tired, that I can’t bring myself to argue. And besides, in the still-present glow of his pleasure, I cannot remember why I ever thought we might not be ideally suited to one another.

I want him quite desperately now.

Laughter echoes in the back of my mind.

_Soon_ , he promises, sleepy. _Night, Haytham_.

_Good night, Shay_ , I manage before letting myself slip back into sleep.

Shay

Haytham looks fantastic striding along the deck after Cook, and he’s so _pleased_ with the little appreciative smirk I send his way this time. No embarrassment.

He understands now, I think.

Once this mission’s over and done with, I’m expecting to get what I’ve been waiting for.

Haytham’s expecting it too, judging by the stray _he looks delicious_ I catch directed at me as Captain Cook greets me with all his usual enthusiasm.

_I could have him, you know_ , I think.

_I know_ , Haytham sends back, glancing sideways at Cook as he shows me the charts.

_He’d love it_ , I add, laughing internally at the thought.

Truth be told, if I hadn’t met Haytham first I would’ve been tempted to go a round or two with the enthusiastic and ever-so-helpful Captain. I like being wanted, and he wants me, and he makes no attempt to hide it.

_I know,_ Haytham thinks again, bristling this time as he strides over.

“Thank you, Master Cook,” Haytham says.

_Master_.

That’s not nice.

_I am not nice,_ Haytham thinks, and it takes everything in me not to laugh aloud.

He isn’t, he’s not a _nice_ man—there’s a kindness to him, a warmth he’s afraid people might take advantage of if they knew about it, but he’s right. Polite enough, but not _nice_.

“We’ll take it from here.”

His lips twitch into the closest thing to a smile he can manage for the man.

Poor Captain Cook. I shouldn’t have used him to tease Haytham, he’s been nothing but good to me, and I _do_ like him.

_I want you to myself_ , Haytham thinks.

The thought sends a shiver through me. It’s the first time he’s thought anything like that, the first time he’s let himself be so blatantly possessive.

Good. He _has_ me, body and soul, and I want him to know it, and want it, and be happy about it.

I think maybe we’re getting there.

The next few hours are a blur of adrenaline and blood, and by the time the haze of it lifts Adéwalé is dead, and I want to regret it, I do—but I remember Haytham’s hurt and I can’t manage anything but satisfaction.

Haytham, though, he isn’t nearly as comfortable with this as me.

At first there’s anger, pure righteous fury at a man who he felt abandoned by, a man he’d never met before today who should have been his protector and his defender, who should have stood side-by-side with him.

And then the grief hits, grief for everything he’s lost, and it’s all I can do to guide him into my cabin before he falls apart in front of the whole damned crew.

Haytham Kenway isn’t a weak man, there isn’t a weak bone in his body, but Adéwalé was the last thing he had of his father, of the life he was supposed to lead, and that life has been long gone for a long time, but today was a painful kick to an old injury.

He’s still and quiet as I take his cloak and coat off for him, strip down holsters and belts and sit him on the edge of the bunk to take his boots off, leaving him looking smaller than I’ve ever seen him in his breeches, stockings, waistcoat and shirt.

“Shay, I can’t…”

“I know,” I murmur, stripping boots and coat myself. Gist will know to take charge above, he saw the look in Haytham’s eyes the same as I did.

He doesn’t know what’s between us—no one does yet—but everyone can see we’re a little closer than we ought to be. Gist doesn’t judge.

I think he approves.

For once, I have no intention of pushing or prodding or goading. Haytham needs me to be exactly what I’m here for now, someone he can collapse in front of, someone he can lean on.

He crumples as soon as I put my arms around him, bursting into a heart-rending sob buried against my chest so no one else will hear it, grief and misery pouring out of him.

I don’t need to be able to hear his thoughts to know much pain he’s in, but I can feel all of it, closing around my heart like an icy fist, my chest so tight it hurts to breathe, stomach tied up in knots.

Haytham cries and cries and _cries_ , all the tears he hasn’t cried since he was ten years old pouring out of him at once. He’s never had anyone to cry in front of before, and I don’t think he even consciously understands that I’m that person, that he _can_ cry in front of me, that it doesn’t change anything between us, it only makes me feel closer to him.

This is how soulmates work. We’ve had a taste of the good and now we’re having a taste of the bad, but it’s not _bad_ , exactly, and I don’t want it to stop except that I don’t want Haytham to hurt anymore.

I hope that me feeling it lifts some of the pain away from him, that maybe I’m carrying part of the burden, but I suppose there’s no way to know.

He coughs toward the end, wrung out, a whimper catching in his throat. By now he’s barely conscious, and my shirt is soaked through to my skin, but I wouldn’t move him for anything in the world.

Eventually he passes out—it’s not sleep, it’s blissful unconsciousness and I’m glad of it, because this is what he needs. _Rest_. Not to watch Adéwalé die a hundred times over in his dreams, not to watch his _father_ die, either.

All that’s left of him in my mind is the faintest hum that tells me he’s not in pain anymore, that he really is resting, that I can relax.

I kiss his forehead, breathing in the scent of his hair, and try to shift as little as I can to get comfortable enough to sleep, too. I know he’ll want me here when he wakes, and I want to be here for him.

_I love you_ , I think, and I know he’s not awake and it won’t be enough to wake him, I know he won’t have any conscious memory of hearing it, but I hope it’ll sink in, and that if he _does_ dream, it’ll be of that. Of happiness and pleasure and being so, _so_ well loved.


	4. Chapter 4

Haytham

I wake still exhausted, aching to my core, and absolutely certain I have once and for all shattered any illusions Shay might have had about me. Illusions which were the only thing that had convinced him I might be anything other than a burden as a soulmate, a trial on his patience and wholly unworthy of his good opinion.

I am also sprawled partially on top of him, and he is quite lucky my frame has not regained the bulk I lost during my time ill or I would have suffocated him in his sleep.

“Aye, but I would’ve died happy,” Shay mumbles, yawning as he wakes, squirming against me as he stretches out his undoubtedly sore muscles.

Shay is fitter than I ever was, even at my peak, and even with my mind elsewhere I cannot help enjoying the solidness of his body under mine.

“Nothing’s changed,” Shay says, quite deliberately, even as the thought echoes in my own mind. “Between us, I mean.”

I cannot believe that.

Shay licks his lips. “You’re right,” he says. “You’re right, it has, but not for the worse. Not to me, anyway. I just…”

Feelings are much easier for Shay than words—whereas I am quite the opposite—and the feeling he pushes toward me this time is a raw, primal kind of possessiveness, the emotional equivalent of wrapping his arms around me and snarling at any threat that might come near.

Shay, I remember, is _dangerous_.

He had no trouble dealing with a legendary Master Assassin surrounded by allies and larger, stronger, and more experienced than he. There isn’t a _scratch_ on him from yesterday.

So he showers me not only in the feeling that he _wants_ to protect me, but that he _can_.

“I still feel lucky to have you,” he says quietly. “I feel a little more like I _do_ have you, now.”

“Because you avenged me?” I ask, uncertain that this is how I want our relationship to be. Adéwalé called Shay a hunting dog, but I do not want that from him.

Shay shakes his head. “Because you cried in front of me.”

The urge to do it all over again wells up in my chest.

He’s right. I haven’t cried in front of anyone in decades, haven’t cried at _all_ in years. Years and years.

Shay took the brunt of it last night without a moment’s hesitation and miraculously, he thinks no less of me this morning.

Shay’s fingers find my hair and card through it, rubbing gentle circles into my scalp and easing the headache I can feel coming on.

I have never known intimacy like this.

“Really?” Shay asks.

Oh how the tables have turned, with my control on my thoughts slipping and Shay’s mind surprisingly quiet.

“Not like this,” I say, reaching out to fiddle with a button on his waistcoat. “I have never simply _slept_ with another person and no one has stroked my hair like this since I was a child.”

Shay hesitates, and I can’t quite bring myself to _say_ it, but I let him know with a thought that this is not a complaint and I don’t want him to stop.

He will spoil me if he keeps this up.

“I don’t mind spoiling you,” Shay says with a smile, waves of warmth and affection lapping at me. “If this is what you want it to be like, you can just say. I like a cuddle.”

Yes, but it won’t always be enough, will it?

_You’re enough_ , Shay thinks at me, forceful, as though he wants to imprint the words on the inside of my skull.

“I would, if I thought it’d help,” he says aloud, shifting and running his fingers along my jaw to make me look at him, meet his gaze. “Haytham, let me spoil you. Let me indulge you. Let me be what you need me to be. That’s what I’m supposed to be here for.”

“And what about what I’m supposed to be for you?”

This is the problem—Shay finds it so easy to be everything I could ever ask for and more, he anticipates my needs before I’m fully aware of them myself. But I do _not_ find it easy to be what he needs.

“Have you thought to ask what I need from you?” Shay asks, soft, anticipating me again.

I had just been on the verge of realising that I don’t even know what it is that he needs.

Sex comes to mind, the thought of Shay’s constant prodding and needling in the beginning, but his laughter, in my head and outside it, stops me in my tracks.

“I’m not saying I don’t think it’d be nice,” Shay says. “But do you really think _that’s_ what I want from you?”

When he puts it like that, I realise I may have made an uncharitable assessment.

“Aye,” Shay agrees, and he _could_ be angry with me, but he isn’t. “Ask me.”

I’m afraid to find out, but I suppose I must. “What do you want from me?”

“I want to be allowed to love you,” Shay says softly, still stroking my hair. It sounds outright insane but he cannot lie to me, not when he’s this close and his mind is so open.

Inexplicably, he means this, and equally inexplicably he understands what he’s asking. That it will be difficult for me to allow it, that I am impossible, brooding, mercurial, distant, cold… all things that make me unsuitable as a partner, a mate, and most especially a soulmate, inescapable as that connection is.

_But you are very handsome_ , Shay thinks cheerfully, as though none of these things present a meaningful obstacle and that is enough to make up for it.

_And warm_ , he adds, with a quality that suggests this is the single greatest virtue it’s possible to possess.

_And mine,_ he finishes, sheepish, and we both know this is the _real_ reason he feels it worth the bother of navigating all my sharp edges.

He has proven himself an expert at working his way through the narrowest of gaps to get to where he wants to be, and there is no doubt in his mind that he can just as easily slip through the armour around my heart with no more effort than a shadow.

I belong to him, and all he asks is that he be allowed to equally belong to me.

“I’m not sure I know how to let you,” I admit, and even this is monumentally difficult.

Shay softens, all the warmth and affection he holds for me opening up so I fall into a sun-drenched meadow brimming with wildflowers, beautiful and fragrant and peaceful, where only the two of us exist.

The meadow solidifies around me in this new mind-space, and Shay drags me down into the carpet of flowers, letting me rest on top of him.

He takes my weight like it is nothing at all.

Shay has an incredible gift for metaphor, and this one is not lost on me.

“Did you make this place yourself?” I ask, resting lightly on his strong chest, though in the real world this would be thoroughly uncomfortable for both of us.

Here we are simultaneously not real, and more real than we ever have been.

“Wanted somewhere nice for you to come,” he says, pleased with himself. “Do you like it?”

I do like it, though I would never have pictured this for myself. My peace would be a quiet study, a crackling fire, and a thunderstorm rolling outside.

But my soulmate is a sailor and the gentle breeze making the meadow sway to and fro and the mild sun and clear sky is _his_ peace, and he wants to share it with me.

“That’s the first time you’ve thought of me as your soulmate,” Shay says, suddenly incandescent with joy.

I can’t stop myself from kissing him, digging my fingers deep into his hair, need welling up in the pit of my stomach, need to be near him as we fall back into the real world, already kissing there, shuffling under the blankets that cover us.

“You don’t have to,” Shay says as my fingers go to the buttons of his waistcoat.

But I _want_ to. I want to so badly that it burns inside me, the need to touch his skin, to be close to him, and some part of me understands that this is because I have finally accepted that he is my soulmate, the first and last person I will ever love, and I want to have all of him.

I understand now that he is on offer, that I _can_ have all of him and that it will not ruin him, or the thing between us.

Shay laughs happily under me, pulling me down for another kiss, his hand sliding under my shirt, fingers branding my skin wherever they touch because I am his, too, the last person he will ever love, and he wants all of me.

“Captain, there’s—”

We both freeze, glancing toward the doorway where Gist is standing, tactfully looking away.

Shay soothes the wave of frustration that rolls over me with a promise of _later_ and shuffles out from under me, tucking me back into the bed and dressing with the practiced ease of a man who has often been caught with his breeches around his ankles and thinks nothing of it.

I wonder if it’s possible to die of embarrassment and he laughs at me, and assures me that Gist won’t say anything, and tells me to get some more sleep, because I need it.

As I slip inexorably into slumber in the Shay-warmed bed, I send a thought that this means he will have to marry me now, and fall asleep basking in his happiness.

Shay

Haytham’s as good as his half-asleep word, and now I have to dress for an engagement party and Jack Weeks is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind while I desperately plead with him for advice on how to tie a cravat because it’s never come up before.

Haytham’s been busy, and I’ve been busy doing different things, and this is the first we’ve been in the same building together in two months and I’m frustrated by still being so far away from him and having to dress by myself, since Weeks is absolutely no help and doesn’t intend to be.

Which is fine, I’m a grown man, I’ve seen this done. How hard can it be?

_You seem distressed_.

All the tension drains out of me the moment I hear Haytham’s voice in my head.

I’ve missed him, and I haven’t had the chance to see him yet, too busy being herded into _my rooms_ by a manservant in this ridiculous house Haytham’s taken on.

I’d forgotten he had more money than God and just now I hate it.

Haytham tuts softly at me in my head, making the kind of soft, indulgent sound one would with a whimpering pup.

He’s surer of me, now.

We’ve had a half-dozen happy tumbles in the meadow and I’ve shown him how much I like to be with him, how easily I can love him. Even now I can’t help thinking it, that I’m letting him get away with teasing me because I want him to be happy.

And because we’re finally in the same place with nothing better to do for a few hours once our engagement has been well and truly announced, and Gist almost certainly won’t walk in on us this time and even if he does I’ll ignore him because it’s not as though the _Morrigan’s_ likely to go down with all hands while it’s safely docked at Fort Arsenal.

_I am not having sex while Gist watches_ , Haytham thinks in response, but there’s a sparkle in him tonight, an unspoken promise of more.

_And I am happy to speak the promise,_ he adds. _Barring unforeseen circumstances making it impossible, my virtue is yours this evening._

I laugh at the idea of Haytham’s _virtue_ and he makes a half-thought point about mine being in tatters. He _is_ practically virginal, compared to me.

_I’ll be very gentle,_ I promise, remembering that he has actually never been with a man in the real world and I’ve taken a lot of shortcuts in my own mind for him, let him have all the pleasure without worrying too much about the detail.

I’ll ease him into the idea that I quite like the detail when it’s done right.

_You’ll have to show me,_ Haytham thinks. _Now stand in front of the mirror and let me help you with that cravat._

I straighten up and look in the mirror, wondering how he means to help me, and feel a little pressure on my mind. The faintest push, like someone trying to open a door I’m leaning against.

I lean away from the door to let him in, trusting that whatever he wants to do, he’ll be careful with me.

_I’ll always be careful with you_ , he promises. _You are the most precious thing I have._

A moment later, my hands aren’t my own. It takes an effort not to push him out, push him away, but I focus and breathe deep and _trust_ , and watch as Haytham guides me, hands moving under instruction from him, his own muscle memory tied to mine temporarily until there’s a neat knot high up on my throat, exactly like Haytham’s.

_I only know how to do it the one way_ , he defends.

And under it, the unvoiced thought that this will mean people know I’m his.

I like that thought a lot, and let him feel how much.

When the door I let him slip through closes again, it’s one part relief and one part emptiness.

I know exactly one other feeling like it and I can feel Haytham’s raised eyebrow and piqued curiosity so strongly he might as well be in the room with me.

_I worried you might feel violated_ , he thinks.

_No. I trust you_.

Besides, he couldn’t do it without me knowing. I could feel him there, I knew it wasn’t me. He can’t _hurt_ me like this, not without me knowing it’s him.

He can’t hurt me anyway.

_I could never hurt you_ , he confirms.

I’ve almost forgotten Weeks is there, trying to update me on the gang situation in New York, until he lets loose with a low whistle behind me.

“You really can hear his thoughts, can’t you?” he asks.

Bonded pairs aren’t unheard of, but we’re a little unusual and it’s impossible to imagine if you haven’t been a part of one. I know—I imagined it so often, making myself sick telling myself that I had it with Liam, that it was just closeness and knowing another person so well you could anticipate them almost always.

I’d twisted myself into knots trying to make us into what I’d thought it’d be like.

Haytham nudges me, just a brush of his mind against mine, like squeezing my shoulder for comfort, and I smile.

“I can, aye,” I say. “It’s… it’s impossible to explain what it’s like but you could never mistake it for anythin’ else. You’d know. You couldn’t _not_ know.”

“Sounds nice,” Weeks says, and it’s sincere. He’s happy for me, I don’t need to read his mind to know that. “And you look…”

“Like a rich man’s painted tart,” I say, because it’s true. Haytham picked out the steel grey silk of my breeches and coat, the scarlet of the waistcoat, covered in flowers and things in a silvery thread that reminds me of him and his outfits with enough gold on them to buy a plantation and pay the workers for a year.

_You look very handsome_ , Haytham tells me.

Well, if _he_ thinks so, that’s all right, then.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> smut ahoy

Haytham

Shay sparkles among company, and despite his protests he is as easy among the influential upper classes of New York as he is sailing his ship, ingratiating himself with everyone he’s introduced to.

He is still bubbling with life by the time the last of our guests leave and I am ready to sleep for a week, exhausted by the endless stream of congratulations and the barely-contained envy that I have found my soulmate and bonded with him, and that he is stunningly handsome and very charming.

Shay watches the last carriage trundle away by the window, having accepted fully a dozen invitations to dinner over the course of the evening. Our social calendar will be quite full well into the approaching winter.

I want to wrap my arms around him from behind, and he offers no resistance to the thought, so I allow myself the indulgence, resting my chin on his shoulder and watching as well.

It is not yet late enough in the year to snow, but there is a chill in the air and the warmth of Shay’s body is welcome in the cooling parlour, where the fires are dying.

“You’re tired,” Shay says. “I won’t… I know you promised me, but I won’t make you keep it.”

“And if I want to?” I ask, turning my head to press a kiss behind his ear, making him gasp.

Shay wants to be wanted openly, and I will show him that I _do_ want him.

“I have been waiting _months_ for this moment,” I say, because it is true, and because Shay is still glowing with the excitement of the evening, and I want him _now_ regardless of anything else.

A shiver rolls deliciously through him and I can feel the low-burning embers of arousal flaring up in the pit of his stomach.

A moment later I’m chasing him up the stairs, still not back to full strength and with no hope of catching him until he pauses at the foot of my—our—bed, and I tackle him bodily onto it, the mattress bouncing beneath us and Shay’s eyes widening as he tests the movement of it for himself.

“There is a benefit or two to having a soulmate with more money than God,” I smirk, remembering his earlier distaste.

There is no avarice in Shay at all, which is a pity, considering. _That_ , I could satisfy readily.

Shay stares at me for a moment, eyes wide and awed, and then drags me in for a kiss, hard and demanding, biting at my mouth and curling greedy fingers around my shoulder and the back of my neck, holding me in place while he has his way with me.

He rolls us both over with a clever twist of his hips, legs tangled with mine, and I watch him unbutton me all over, pushing clothing out of the way until he has my shirt shoved up to my collarbones, so bunched up I’m in danger of suffocating in the fabric.

It is difficult to care overly much about breathing as his fingers skim over the planes of my torso, dipping into the much better-defined grooves between the muscles where I have regained at least _some_ of my former fitness.

I can feel how appreciative he is humming in the back of my mind, our bond lit up with mutual excitement and arousal. I think Shay would have enjoyed my body however he found it, I do not think any part of him is so shallow that he would have rejected me however I came to him, but he is so _pleased_ and I feel the attention paid to my physical recovery was more than worth the effort.

The tip of a finger traces the scar that got me into this mess in the first place.

“I’ve never seen this,” he says quietly. “Must’ve nearly killed you.”

“Nearly,” I say, much more easily than I should be able to. That scar hurts in more ways than one and yet Shay’s touch soothes it. “I’ll tell you later, the story would quite ruin the mood.”

I know some of my lingering pain slips through and Shay soothes me, running his palm up and down my side until the scar is forgotten and only the tingling touch of his skin on mine remains.

Shay takes a more methodical approach to undressing me the second time, and soon we are both naked, stripped bare before each other for the first time.

His body is more beautiful than he’s shown me in our meadow, but it too has scars I haven’t seen before—undoubtedly, scars Shay pays no mind to and therefore forgets he has.

He licks his lips as he looks at me and I can feel the overwhelming lust in him.

I have never felt so desperately wanted.

Shay pounces, his warm skin sliding against my own as he settles on top of me, bracketing my hips with his knees, strong thighs flexing under my touch as he kisses me with such enjoyment.

I have learned now that Shay can be quite satisfied with kisses alone, when I am too tired to give him more even in my mind, and I have often found sleep with the nearly-real touch of his lips against mine.

Suddenly, I can hardly wait to be married to him and have this always, to collapse into bed at the end of a long day and find Shay waiting for me, for him to kiss me to sleep wrapped in a warm blanket of his so-easily-given affection.

“I want to marry you in the spring,” I murmur between kisses. We haven’t discussed this and I know Shay thought I was announcing what I intended to be a very long engagement tonight.

I had thought the same, but now I can see no reason to wait.

_Whatever you want_ , he thinks, already occupied with kissing me again, and I realise neither of us have anyone in particular to invite to such an occasion, and we would both seem out of place in any church we might choose, and perhaps we ought to marry sooner, forgo anything unnecessary to tie him legally to me so he will inherit in the event of my death.

_If you die on me I’ll figure out a way to bring you back so I can kill you myself,_ he thinks, and then begins to kiss his way down my neck, and anything I might say to that is quite lost to the thought of what he’s about to do.

_You were so surprised when I did this for you in the meadow_ , Shay thinks, insufferably smug.

I had been surprised, because no one had ever done it for me before, and this is about to be the first time in the real world.

Shay takes his time as though we were still in a dream space, as though we have nothing _but_ time.

The sheets creak in protest as I curl my fingers into them, helpless under the relentless pleasure of Shay’s lips and tongue trailing down my belly, and I have already made the mistake of showing him where I’m most sensitive.

He exploits the knowledge ruthlessly.

In our minds, we need only feel pleasure as intensely as we imagine. It is not _real_ , Shay is not really touching my skin, I cannot feel the heat of his mouth against me.

Now that he is here I realise my capacity for pleasure is much, much higher than I have ever imagined and I am unready to bear it.

Shay pauses as I think this, and I look down to see his eyes black with lust, perfect tongue darting out to lick his lips, uncertainty making him hover an inch above my skin.

_Too much?_

_No,_ I think automatically, and then hesitate, aware of my aching fingers still tangled in the sheets.

Shay moves, easing my hand open and threading his fingers with mine.

This is so easy with him that I can barely contain my relief.

_Tell me if it’s too much_ , Shay thinks as he goes back to nuzzling my belly, so bright with happiness and contentment. _I want us being together to be the nicest thing in your life_.

I know it will be and I know that I am once again being unforgivably difficult.

_Not unforgivably_ , Shay assures me, glancing up with those stunning dark eyes again, mouthing his way along the crease of my thigh.

And then any coherent thought beyond _more_ leaves my mind as his wickedly clever tongue laves a broad, deliberate stripe along the underside of my cock, and _too much_ turns abruptly to not enough.

Shay laughs, smug and happy and so pleased with me, so excited to be with me that I feel it as though it is my own feeling. For the first time in my life I _feel_ desirable—not merely as though someone else is interested in me, but as though they _should_ be, as though this makes sense.

More laughter, Shay’s happiness crowded in my chest alongside my own, pleasure overwhelming once more, but this time I have no desire for it to stop, no panic as Shay drags me down to the depths of it.

I can imagine nothing better than this, no greater pleasure to be had than Shay’s mouth on me, warm and soft, so clever.

_Oh, sweetheart,_ he thinks, an entirely new pet name drenched in affection that I might have rejected minutes ago but cling to desperately now. _This is just foreplay_.

The thought undoes me quite suddenly, but Shay must have known, must have been ready for me to come in his mouth, because he swallows and licks and laps without a word of complaint, contentment radiating through our bond, his own arousal glowing hot even as mine cools, though I doubt it will _stay_ cool for long, the first tendrils of tension already curling their way around my belly again as Shay crawls back up my body.

I can taste myself in his mouth, and this too is new, and he shares the erotic thrill of it with me, of feeling so connected, of his joy in watching me happy.

I have never been more certain of anything than that I am the luckiest man alive, whether I deserve it or not.

“You deserve me,” Shay murmurs between kisses. “You deserve all of this and all I want is to give it to you.”

_Again and again and again_ , he doesn’t say, but he cannot help letting me hear it.

“Show me how to make love to you,” I say, wanting nothing more than to give every pleasure to Shay in return, and he smiles so brightly I am blinded by it.

Shay

Haytham’s a quick study, and I squirm happily under him as he eases into me, gripping the pillow I’m clinging to and arching into the one under my hips.

He’s got more bloody pillows than the Sultan of Brunei but I don’t mind so much right now.

_You are beginning to make the connection between wealth and comfort_ , Haytham laughs in his head, teasing me, but I don’t mind that either, because he’s happy.

_Aye, but I’d be just as happy being fucked over a desk_.

_And only a halfway decent desk would hold up to it, so again, you really are better off with someone who owns one._

Haytham kisses the back of my neck hot and open-mouthed, hand skimming over my side and onto my belly, fingers splayed possessively over sensitive skin.

He feels _so_ good, and as I clench around him I push the feeling over the bond. He stills, a rush of arousal—his arousal—washing over me, and I close my eyes and focus on how he feels, and on giving him that feeling.

Haytham’s breath hitches as he rolls his hips experimentally.

“Is that really what it feels like for you?” he asks, so surprised I can’t help grinning.

_This isn’t even the best bit,_ I think, smug.

My eyes fall closed again as Haytham gets his bearings, so gentle at first, as though he thinks he might break me.

A shock runs through both of us as he finally grazes that sensitive spot I hinted about, and then does it again as if to test and see if that was real.

“Oh,” he says, and I catch him thinking that he sees why I was so insistent when we first met, why I would have done this with him, soulmates or not.

_It’s better with you_ , I think, and it’s true, it _is_ better with him because he’s mine and he’s beautiful and I love him.

_You love me?_

Ah. That’s the first time I’ve thought that so he could hear it.

Haytham’s head is suddenly awhirl, reeling with thoughts and feelings too fast for me to follow, but it only lasts a moment before he grips my hair and kisses me, hard, teeth catching on my lip and his hips rocking into me, every stroke slow and deep.

He’s _taking_ me, but I’m all his, I’ve been his since the moment we met and tears well up in my eyes as I feel him _accepting_ me, finally, letting himself have me like I want him to.

_You are mine_ , Haytham responds, half tender, half aggressive. _You will never want for anything._

This is how Haytham loves. With promises of security and comfort and certainty, and with a fierceness that I can feel surprising him, too.

Thoughts give way to feelings a moment later, my knees slipping further apart to let him take me deeper, lust and want and need building in me, Haytham’s forehead pressed to the top of my shoulders, breath tickling my skin, the maddening rhythm of his hips pushing me higher and higher.

This is even better than I imagined, feeling what he feels as we rock together, his fingers threaded with mine above my head, the two of us so intensely compatible that with a little practice we could do this for hours on end.

I’ve loved him since I first knew what he was to me, and I love him so much more now that it hurts to contain it all and I know it spills over, I know he can feel me thinking it, I could never hide it from him when we’re so close.

It’s this thought that pushes him over, crying out against my skin as blinding pleasure overwhelms him, and I come, too, and remind him that he doesn’t have to be like me, that it takes me no time at all to fall wholly in love with anyone who shows me a lick of kindness, that I love what I have of him and I don’t need anymore.

It’s a good time to tell him, because he accepts it all without even a hint of resistance.

He holds me close after, skin sticking together, bodies cooling between soft sheets.

_So you like the sheets, then?_ Haytham teases, sleepy and more content than I’ve known him.

This was what I always wanted, to be a balm for his soul the way he is for mine, just by existing.

_I like the sheets,_ I agree.

_Good_ , Haytham thinks with genuine happiness, pleased at being able to make me comfortable and content like this, and I realise I’ll have to accept that this is how he wants to show me he cares.

_I care_ , he confirms. _You are the single most wonderful thing in my life_.

_Likewise_ , I think as I begin to fade away, sleep clawing at my mind. Haytham glows with joy as I slip, and I can’t recall ever being happier.


	6. Chapter 6

Haytham

I have never had anyone to play with before, and the moment I revealed this to Shay he took it upon himself to exhaust me with it.

We are still learning each other’s bodies in the real world and experimenting with sharing them ever more intimately in our minds, swapping feelings and sensations, even outside of the context of sex.

For a full week, everything is pure, uncomplicated pleasure, and we spend more time in bed than out of it. Shay’s body nearly always touches mine and I can see now that I would never tire of his presence, that he may tease and touch and even use me endlessly and I may be physically exhausted but I will always want more of him.

He is terribly smug about this and insists he knew this was what it would be like if only I could get over the hurdle of letting him show me in the first place.

We sleep in a tangle of long limbs and Shay cannot be coaxed into a nightshirt and instead coaxes me out of mine, and it is impossible to resist his desire to be skin-to-skin as often as possible.

I have been aware of sharing Shay’s dreams for several days when my mind drops into a body that does not belong to me but is almost as familiar as though it did.

Shay’s body.

We are standing in the most incredible, vaulted space, seething with power unlike any I have ever known, hairs standing up on my—Shay’s—arms as we look around in awe.

A Precursor temple. I do not need to have seen one to understand that this is what it is—Shay knows, and so I know.

Dread fills me as a bridge rises from the abyss below, responding to our presence step by step.

This would be magnificent, if only I didn’t know what comes next.

As it is, I can only watch in horror as my own hands reach out to touch the artefact on the pedestal in front of me, and the first rumbling vibrations of an earthquake fill me with fear.

We run as the temple collapses around us, out into the street where Lisbon is falling into ruin all around—people shout, and I only half-understand the words but the meaning is clear. They’re afraid. They’re desperately searching for loved ones, desperately searching for safety, in fear of their lives and confused.

_Why is this happening?_

_God save us._

But Shay and I both know that this was not an act of God, and help is not coming.

Lungs burning and muscles protesting, we escape by means few people would have the skills to manage and it weighs on Shay’s heart that he cannot save these people, that he can only save himself.

A building collapses in front of us, and then around us, and then under us, a final heart-wrenching leap into the sea, and then…

Shay wakes beside me with a gasp, fingers digging deep into the muscles of my back, a low groan and then a sob that comes from so deep in his belly that I feel it in mine.

It takes a moment for me to realise that I too am panting for breath, drenched in sweat, heart racing.

Shay has never cried in front of me before, but I suddenly understand why he felt so honoured by me doing it in front of him. As he sobs against my chest again, it is my turn to stroke his hair and press soothing kisses to his face, salt-tears spilling into my mouth as I wish desperately that I could pluck this memory from his head and throw it away.

 _I’m here, Shay_ , I think desperately, wanting to give him any comfort I can. _You’re safe_.

But his own safety is barely a detail to him now. He is drowning in guilt over the loss of life, over being powerless to help once the disaster was triggered, over surviving when so many others perished, and even over finding himself in a comfortable bed, wanting for nothing, when even the survivors have struggled these past years to rebuild their lives.

 _You are a survivor too_ , I think pressing my forehead to his, heart aching for him.

All I can do is run soothing fingers through his hair and a palm up and down his side as he calms down from the memory.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes, shifting to meet my eyes, frightened and upset differently now. “I… I shouldn’t… you… I’m _sorry_.”

He can’t articulate it, but I realise a moment later that he is _sorry_ for burdening me with his pain and the shock of it hits me like a bucket of cold water.

Shay must know I am as much his to lean on as he is mine? That I can bear his burdens—more, that I _want_ to—and that he has carried so many of mine that I must owe him this even if I objected to being allowed to see all of him.

I don’t object, either. Not in the least. I am lucky to have Shay and I _want_ to have him, and I finally understand why he was so frustrated with me refusing to open up to him in the beginning and why he felt such joy at finally being allowed to comfort me.

In this moment I cannot conceive of a greater purpose in life than being a comfort to Shay Cormac.

This surprises him, and it is just enough of a shock to make him pause long enough for me to press a desperate, hungry kiss to his mouth and take his free hand and press it to the scar on my side, the one I have so far avoided telling him anything of because it requires me to reveal things that I fear would cost me his love.

“Never,” Shay says, which is what I want—to bring him back from the fear that this would change my opinion of him and remind him that we both have pasts and mine is as dark as his—no, darker.

Shay’s wrongs are wholly forgivable, committed unknowingly, under the trusted guidance of people who should have cared for him and had his best interests at heart.

Mine…

I show him everything. I show him Lucio, the boy who left that scar, and I show myself kidnapping him so Reginald could force his mother to work for him. I show him a monastery in flames and the heat of my anger and grief, and while I do not _show_ him Jim Holden’s body, I let him know that his death, too, is on my conscience.

I show him Miko’s escape and then his death at my hands, years later, for a trinket which ultimately fizzles out to nothing.

Braddock’s cruelty and my refusal to kill him and the loss of Ziio because of it, entirely deserved. Every life ended by my hand, in order, and the varying levels of coldness I felt at their deaths.

I show him my sister in a foreign harem, a shadow of her former self, and I show him what she once was and he thinks she is beautiful regardless, and that it must run in the family, and he even, somehow, thinks that it is a shame he cannot bear me a child because it would be very pretty.

He examines all my sins like a deck of cards spread in front of him, running his hands over them like a fortune teller, but when he is done he gathers the deck, tucks it into a pocket, and reaches out for me.

I don’t remember slipping so far into our minds that Shay is dressed, but when we come back to the real world he is curled up against me, his forehead resting against my shoulder, breathing and heartbeat back to normal, sweat drying on his skin.

And still the quiet bloom of love in his heart settles in my chest as though it is my own feeling, and I cannot help but think, again, that I am the luckiest man alive to have him.

He has seen all of me now and if anything, loves me more fully for it.

Impossible as this seems, peace unlike any I have known since I was ten years old settles over me. I cannot question Shay’s love for me when I can feel it for myself, so radiantly bright that it makes the sun seem like a distant star.

I sigh, relaxing against him, breathing in his familiar scent—Shay always manages to smell of salt, regardless of whether he’s been anywhere near the sea recently.

“I think we ought to indulge in a bath later,” I say, aware that we are both still drenched in panicked sweat, even as it dries. The discomfort of it lingers and washing it away will be good for both of us.

Besides, Shay has had so few baths in his lifetime that he can count them on his fingers. I intend to change that.

Shay hums, wriggling closer to me, fingers splayed over the scar on my side.

“You didn’t deserve this,” he says. “You were trying to right a wrong.”

No one, I think, has ever thought better of another person than Shay does me. He takes everything about me in the best of faith.

“Lucio didn’t deserve what happened to him, either, and I do not blame him for his anger at me. I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same.”

Shay shifts, meeting my gaze again. “You wouldn’t have missed the important bits,” he says, so simply.

“No,” I agree. “No, I wouldn’t.”

The thought that if anyone ever hurt Shay even a fraction as much as I’d hurt Lucio they would live only long enough to thoroughly regret it through a haze of agony curls through my mind unbidden.

Shay ties it to an identical thought about me, and tucks that in his pocket, too.

Lucio will live a longer and less painful life if he manages to avoid Shay for the rest of it, and this, ridiculously, is what finally soothes me.

Shay does not have my cruelty, but his loyalty is boundless, and I have it utterly.

He allows me a long, slow, indulgent kiss even as his exhaustion begins to overwhelm him, and as he falls asleep in my arms I am quite sincerely content.

Shay

My heart races as the night air whips through my hair, laughter at the thrill of being chased welling up in my chest.

 _Oh, but I missed you_ , I think, breathless as Haytham follows, just a few paces behind.

We’ve been apart too long after a winter of curling up in a happy cocoon together, steeped in every pleasure.

Duty called as soon as the ice started thawing and I’ve been gone, and so has Haytham, away in Boston—he hates Boston.

I only dropped by home long enough to wave at him through a window and tell him to catch me if he could.

Now our feet are light across the rooftops and I’m sure of him in this, sure he can follow wherever I go, strength returned to him and scars no longer weighing him down.

When he finally catches me, whirling me around and pinning me against a wall with his body, a thrill runs through me at the thought that I couldn’t get free if I wanted to.

Haytham doesn’t have it in him to hurt me, but I like the idea of being at his mercy all the same.

His eyes glitter in the twilight, hunger written all over him. Hunger for _me_.

“I seem to have caught myself a wanted man,” Haytham murmurs. “The French would pay a fortune for you dead and a king’s ransom alive, you know.”

I grin. I do know. I’m good at making trouble.

“Not an ounce of shame,” Haytham says, tracing the shell of my ear with his thumb, one hand more than enough to keep me in place.

If he really had caught me, there’d be no use struggling.

 _And you are so very aroused by the thought_ , Haytham thinks, and I can feel how pleased he is by that.

He could’ve retired to a life behind a desk, getting soft and settling slowly into middle age, but he hasn’t and at least some part of that is for me, because he wants me to want him.

I’d want him anyway, but I can’t pretend that having him like this, bigger and stronger than I am, isn’t working for me.

“What will you do with me?” I ask, biting the tip of his thumb as he brushes it over my lips.

“It’s tempting to turn you in,” Haytham says, not once breaking character, his voice dark and dangerous.

He’s right, I’m _very_ aroused by the thought, by the idea of being at his mercy, and he’s letting me have it.

He’s learned that he loves to please me, that it makes him feel good about himself when I’m happy and sated. I think he even understands that I feel the same way, when _he’s_ happy and sated.

“As you know,” he continues. “Templars are so very greedy and we do completely lack any sort of moral core. Think of all the pillows you’re worth.”

Haytham’s expression doesn’t so much as twitch, but I’m struggling not to laugh now.

I’m not afraid of him. No part of me is. I _can’t_ be.

But I like the game.

“Maybe there’s something I can offer you?” I bite my lip, looking him up and down. “Something better than an endless supply of pillows?”

“Oh yes?” Haytham smirks. “And what could that possibly be?”

I motion him down so I can whisper in his ear, and he comes willingly even as I fight not to laugh. “A kiss?”

Haytham chuckles. “Oh, I’m afraid that won’t _quite_ be enough to satisfy me.”

“Two kisses?” I offer, grinning at him now. “That’s twice as much.”

“Two kisses in exchange for giving up a king’s ransom,” Haytham says, looking me over. “I would have paid many times more for one.”

I laugh as he swoops in, pressing his whole body against me and curling his hand around the back of my neck.

 _That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me_.

Pleasure ripples through the bond, quiet satisfaction like Haytham can’t imagine anything better than kissing me on a rooftop in the middle of New York.

 _I’m taking a week off and keeping you in bed the entire time,_ Haytham thinks.

I laugh again, wrapping my legs around his waist as the kiss deepens, sure he can take my weight and unsurprised when he holds me up one-handed, fingers digging deep into the flesh of my arse.

 _Not sure that counts as more romantic,_ I think, _but I’ll hold you to it._

Haytham laughs into my mouth, making the most of his first kiss and not breaking it until he’s eased me down again, a twinkle of mischief in his eyes.

“You strike me as a man of honour, Master Cormac,” Haytham says, back to playing. “Would you agree?”

“Aye, sir. Very honourable.”

“And you have given me your word that I am owed _two_ kisses,” he says, brushing the pad of his thumb over my lip again. “Have you not?”

“Aye, sir.”

I’d forgotten how beautiful he is, how good he smells.

“So you are honour-bound to _keep_ your word?” Haytham asks, and I can feel that he’s pleased with himself but I can’t figure out where he’s going with this, he’s keeping it carefully out of my reach, passing it from hand to hand as I reach out to work out what he’s about to do.

I stop trying to grab hold of the thought, trusting that whatever he’s planning, it won’t hurt me. Haytham would never hurt me.

His smile softens, nose brushing against mine while he waits for an answer.

“I am, sir,” I say, letting my eyes fall closed and anticipation well up inside me, eager for the second kiss.

And the third, and the fourth, and all the other kisses after it.

 _You’ll have to catch me_ , he thinks, and by the time I open my eyes he’s already backing up toward the edge of the roof.

I watch him fall backward, casual as anything, and think _showoff_ as I chase after him, flopping into the same hay cart and following his trail, hearing his laughter in my head as he scales another building like he was made for it, the perfect blend of grace and power.

I love him so much it hurts, and I’ll get that second kiss or die in the attempt.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so we're real clear I was NOT kidding about the angst (but it'll be fine I promise).

Haytham

So far, I have resisted the urge to be overprotective of Shay—I know he wouldn’t appreciate it, and I know more than well enough that he doesn’t _need_ it, but as he falls into place beside me this evening, I cannot help but feel relief that instead of working with Gist or Weeks, he is working with _me_.

Even aside from being able to hear his thoughts and feel his feelings, there’s understanding between us, a harmony of purpose.

He so easily follows my lead, the ideal partner in all things, and I wonder if this is because he is my soulmate, or if he is my soulmate because of this.

I suppose this is the sort of unanswerable philosophical question Shay would laugh at me for and I can hear him chuckling in the back of my mind before I’ve finished the thought.

 _I like working with you, too_ , he soothes, cheerfully threatening the man I have pinned to a wall.

The looming problem of Hope Jensen and her apparent knowledge of how to activate the Precursor box has become too urgent to ignore, and I can feel the tension in Shay.

He will solve this tonight.

A flash of horror as my blade opens the throat of my unwilling informant, and I am uneasy as Shay follows me, uncertain whether this feeling was distaste at being sprayed with blood or… something else.

Shay’s mind has already moved on, focused on Hope and what he knows he must do.

I reach out to him, offer a nudge of support even while we deal with the chaos in the streets.

The sight of redcoats swarming the streets of New York and handling Assassin gangs makes him miss George Monro with such intensity that I am momentarily caught off-balance, stopping dead as a wave of grief washes over him.

 _You loved him_ , I think before I can stop myself. I should have realised, but my chance to speak to Shay about Monro was lost in the shock of discovering he was my soulmate.

Stupidly, I had forgotten that Shay’s heart had not always belonged to me.

Shay nods, meeting my eyes, uncertain.

In his mind, he discards a dozen responses before he comes to _are you upset?_

 _I’m sorry you lost him_ , I think, desperate to reach out, to offer him a moment’s ease from the sudden shock of pain, a reopened wound that has never quite healed properly.

A sergeant interrupts me before I can tell him everything I want to. That I’m not upset, that I _am_ sorry, that I wish he was still here, that I wish I’d known him better so I could better share the burden of grief, so I could help him remember a man he clearly adored.

“I’ll go after Hope myself,” Shay says.

I agree, still struck stupid by the evening’s revelation and rooted by the force of Shay’s conviction—this is _his_ task to undertake, and his alone.

It takes approximately three minutes for me to regret it.

Shay’s sudden fall is enough to wind me, the breath knocked as forcefully out of my lungs as his, leaving me doubled over and gasping for air.

A young Redcoat, soft-faced and clearly concerned, feels the brunt of a death glare as he tries to ask if I’m all right.

I am _not_ all right, and neither is Shay.

_Haytham?_

His voice in my head has a note of panic to it.

_Haytham, Hope’s poisoned me._

My blood runs cold.

 _I’ll find you_ , I think desperately, already running in the direction he ran off in, searching for the thread between us to guide me to him.

 _Don’t, you’ll only get yourself killed_.

A wave of pain washes over me through the bond, whole-body agony, and once again I can’t breathe.

It’s impossible to tell whether this is because _Shay_ can’t breathe, or because I can feel him dying and my body simply wants to follow wherever he goes.

 _Come back_ , I think desperately. _Come back to me_.

 _I can’t. Hope has the antidote_.

This, finally, is enough to spur me into action.

In the distance I can hear a commotion—shouting, the indignant cries of people who’ve been shoved unceremoniously out of the way. I know it well.

Someone is running.

Before I come to a conscious decision I am running in the direction of the shouting, flying after Hope—who, if I catch her alive, will regret today for quite a long time before the mercy of death.

As I run I reach out to Shay, grab handfuls of his pain to take it away from him as he has so often done for me, wrap it around my own shoulders even as my body protests.

I have not _really_ been poisoned, and Shay has.

He will be all right.

He _will_ be all right.

He must be, or I…

A pang of guilt and regret hit me all at once, Shay’s gut-twisting reaction to killing another of his former colleagues—friends, I think. He thought of them as friends, though I would not consider that they had been anything of the sort to him.

The way he reacts to even the simplest praise or the barest consideration, to not being constantly bullied and treated as less-than, this tells me that Hope was never his _friend_.

But he cared for her, as he so easily cares for everyone. Even though she would have killed him, cruelly and painfully, and had made elaborate plans to do so.

 _I’ve got it_ , Shay thinks, relief washing over him.

I barely have time to laugh with relief before the unthinkable happens.

Shay is gone.

Shay

The moment I wake I’m gasping for breath, as though I could never fill my lungs no matter how hard I try, and everything aches. Muscles and bones and fingernails and _hair_. It all hurts, and for a long moment I’m too caught up in the pain and the need to breathe to notice it.

And then the gaping, sucking void where Haytham should be hits me like a misfired cannon to the chest, knocking the air out of my lungs again, leaving me drowning.

I’m so busy searching for him in my head that I barely notice when he sits down on the bed beside me, and even _looking_ at him isn’t enough to convince me that he’s really here.

He takes my hand in both of his and holds it in his lap, looking as lost as I feel, and a wave of nausea washes over me at the thought that I _should_ feel it.

“I know,” Haytham says softly. “I know.”

He looks awful. Drawn and pale, with dark rings under his eyes, loose strands of hair framing his face where they’ve escaped his ribbon and he hasn’t done anything about it.

“How long…”

“Just short of a full day,” he says, looking down at my fingers as he plays with them.

Even with him touching me, it feels like he’s died. He’s _gone_. There’s an empty space in my head where he should be, and I know he hasn’t always been there, but I don’t remember what it was like then.

“Are you hungry?” he asks, and my stomach lurches.

Haytham squeezes my fingers and it doesn’t _feel_ like him and I hate it.

“Tea, then?” he offers. “Do you think you could…?”

I look up at him, helpless, knowing it wouldn’t do me any good.

Half of my heart has been cut out of me and on the inside I’m already dying.

The antidote. Something in it must have done this.

No way of knowing if it’s permanent.

All of a sudden Haytham’s kissing me, our noses bumping together in a way they never have, his teeth knocking against mine, and it’s only making it worse, but I understand why _he_ needs it and I try to let him, try not to show how much I hate it.

His fingers feel foreign in my hair and my insides squirm with the thought of doing this with someone who isn’t him, even though it _is_.

I try to focus on the familiar, the scent I’m so used to, the taste of his mouth, the way he tucks his thumb behind my ear, so gentle, a tiny gesture I’ve fallen in love with again and again and again, but none of it feels right without being able to feel what he feels, without the background hum of knowing what he’s thinking, even if it’s just that he likes this and wants more of it and could kiss me until the world ended and not regret it.

But it’s useless, and I can’t help shying away from him, hands on his chest to stop him doing it again.

“I’m sorry,” Haytham says, backing away to leave me space.

“No, I… _I’m_ sorry.”

I’m sorry for suddenly not being so desperately in love with him that I feel like I could burst, I’m sorry that this happened, that I let Hope poison me, that I ran off on my own even if I’m glad it protected him.

“You have absolutely nothing to apologise for,” Haytham says, reaching out to me before he remembers and then pausing with his hand halfway between us.

I look at it for long moments, grief welling up in my throat.

Grief for a man who’s still alive, who I could reach out and touch if only I could stand to do it. Who I can still taste on my lips but can’t hear in my head anymore.

I’d rather be dead than have this, and I hesitate a moment, waiting for Haytham’s gentle reproach in my head, telling me I _wouldn’t_ rather be dead, and it never comes.

Because it can’t.

All I want right now is to sleep.

I lie back down without saying anything, burrowing under the blankets, still dressed in shirt and breeches.

“Do you mind if I sleep in the bed with you?” Haytham asks, so soft, and for a moment I almost forget he has to say it out loud because I _do_ love him and I do want him near but I’ve never known him without him being in my head.

He needs this. He’s no better off than me—worse, maybe, since he’s been awake for it.

I get the feeling he’s been awake the whole time.

“I don’t mind,” I say, and it doesn’t matter that I do, because he can’t hear me anymore, either. For once in the time we’ve known each other I can tell him a comforting lie.

The words taste bitter in my mouth.

I’ve never lied to him before and I never wanted to.

“Shay, I…” Haytham pauses, plucking uselessly at the buttons of his waistcoat. “I want you to know that…”

 _Please don’t tell me you love me_ , I think. _Not now_.

For a moment I imagine that this is what he’ll hear, that it’d be just my luck if I’d told him not to say it and _that_ brought the connection back.

“I…”

_No no no no no no no._

“I will take care of you. Whatever happens. You’ve been too good to me for me to forget it, and I would like… that is… you _are_ still my soulmate. Whether you can hear me or not.”

My lungs tighten again. He sounds so sincere, I can tell that even without being able to feel it.

I can barely feel anything just now. _Feelings_ have been a shared thing so long that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be left with only my own.

The world feels dull and shallow and lifeless without someone to share it with.

“I’m still your soulmate,” I agree, watching Haytham as he climbs into bed beside me, movements slow and laboured, the same ache in his bones as there is in mine.

We’re both dying. Days, maybe weeks left if we fight it.

Some people last months, but that’s as good as it ever gets.

And what’s the point in fighting? Fighting to live a few more days in agony and misery seems like a waste of effort.

Haytham reaches out to me and I force myself not to flinch or wriggle away from him, knowing how much it’ll hurt him if I do but fighting everything in me to stop myself.

I don’t want to live without him and I know I can’t, anyway.

I close my eyes and pretend to myself that I can hear his endless racing thoughts, the way they flit from one thing to another when he’s sleepy and he lets his guard down and I’m treated to every silly thing that passes through his mind.

Maybe I’ll dream of him, and maybe that’ll give me a little more strength for tomorrow.

I have affairs to settle.


	8. Chapter 8

Haytham

It is a small mercy that Shay is sleeping peacefully, his run-in with Hope leaving him exhausted enough to remain unconscious most of the time, only waking occasionally. I have coaxed him into several sips of water but he cannot tolerate more before he pushes me away again.

There is a cup of tea at my elbow, untouched, stone cold.

It is the third such cup of the day.

I have started this letter five times and by now I can no longer remember what I meant to put in it.

There’s so much to do, and time feels impossibly short.

A knock on the door startles me.

“Only me, sir,” Charles’ voice comes through the wood.

I have little choice but to see him—and a number of other Templars, to pass on instructions.

Gist and Weeks, too, will want to speak to Shay, though they may have to content themselves with speaking _at_ him.

I do not need access to his mind to know that he’s fading fast, and sees little worth coming back for. He can barely stand my touch, and watching him tolerate my need to touch him hurts more than anything I have ever been through in my life.

“Come,” I call back, not stirring from my place on the bed. The time for worrying about image, I think, has passed.

Charles slips into the room furtively, glancing around with interest. He has never been in this most private of spaces, and I cannot fault his curiosity.

He pauses, craning to see Shay curled up on the far side of the bed, but I have positioned a number of things in this room very carefully to shield him from the attentions of the stream of visitors I must accept over the course of the next day or so.

“Good of you to stay with him, sir,” Charles says.

I cannot tell whether he is trying to save me the discomfort of admitting to the reality of the situation, or whether he does not fully understand it.

“Has he said… where the Assassins are going? Can we send a ship?”

“He has not.”

I can’t help a quick glance at Shay, half-hoping that his distaste for Charles will wake him. I’ve never asked him about it, but I know Charles does not feel especially warm toward him, either.

They are perfectly civil to each other, and therefore it is not an issue I’ve ever felt the need to address.

I set my lap desk aside, leaving it between myself and Shay on the bed, though the physical barrier does not help my already irretrievably sour mood.

“It’s a shame, sir. He was effective.”

I bristle at the past tense _was_ , but Charles is right. The likelihood of Shay surviving this dwindles with every hour our connection remains lost.

Already injured and weak, he cannot fight it. Whatever was in the antidote weakened him further, a cruel trick that only prolonged his life for the sake of leaving him in agony.

“He…”

I want to say something, I know I _must_ , but what is there to say?

“All the same, it is perhaps… fortuitous that you are no longer tied to him. I was never certain he could be trusted.”

The look I turn on Charles may have been enough to cause a lesser man to expire on the spot.

He pales, clearly realising he has spoken in error, but there is surprise all over his features.

“I was always certain he could be trusted,” I say evenly. “The Order’s secrets are safer with Shay than they are with me.”

Charles very clearly does not believe this, but will not challenge me on it.

“Yes, well… but it… I only mean to say that it will free you to think about… the things that matter, instead of…”

“Instead of?” I ask lazily.

Charles does not know me well enough to know that this is a very dangerous tone, but if he is determined to hang himself, I am not in the mood to save him.

He makes a vague gesture at Shay. “Instead of the whims of a common pirate and his spat with the Assassins.”

My body moves before my mind can catch up to it, and Charles is pinned against the wall under the full force of my weight, blade at his throat.

The sudden exertion after days of nothing makes me ache, but I have always been fitter than he and the fear in his eyes is wholly justified.

I am _not_ in the mood and I was not overly fond of the idea of leaving the Colonial Rite in his clumsy hands in any case.

“That _common pirate_ is, firstly, a better man than either you or I have ever even aspired to be,” I say, voice a low growl so as not to risk waking Shay now.

I do not want his last memory of me to be this.

“And secondly, he is my soulmate. That is not an accident, it is not an unfortunate side-effect of an ill-considered decision, it is part of something so much more vast than anything we know that we cannot even begin to understand it. Shay has not tricked me or bewitched me or anything of the kind, he is tied to me so deeply that he cannot be extracted, not even by death.”

Charles opens his mouth, but clearly thinks better of whatever he was about to say.

“I am _dying_ ,” I continue, anger welling up in my chest. Anger that not only is Shay being taken away too soon, but so is everything else. Everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve accomplished, all being snatched out of my hands by the callously cruel act of one Assassin who Shay regretted killing.

This revelation comes as a surprise to Charles.

“I am dying because _he’s_ dying, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Believe me when I say that if burning these colonies to the ground would help, I would do it in a heartbeat. If dismantling the entire Templar Order would save him, you would already be dead. If there was any life on Earth that could be exchanged for Shay’s then it would already be forfeit. There is _nothing_ I wouldn’t do to save him, even if it wouldn’t save me. I love him.”

Again, this is a surprise.

It is the first time I’ve said it aloud, the first time I’ve formed the thought so clearly, but in the depths of my being I know it is true.

Even without his constant bubbling presence in the back of my mind, so easy and content, such a foil to my tendency to brood, so quick to drag me out of a dark mood and into the light.

I love Shay. I have loved him for some time.

And it is not _fair_ that I’m losing him. I’ve lost so much.

Shay looked at me on that first day and thought the same, that he’d lost everything, but here was one last thing he had. I had not been perfect—I had been a long way from it—but Shay has been constant and patient and always thought the best of me, seen the man I _could_ be rather than the man I was.

I never quite reached his high aspirations for me, and yet he has never once been disappointed.

He was the one thing I had left and now I will lose him, too, and death will be a kindness.

“Get out,” I bark, grabbing Charles by the collar and tossing him unceremoniously into the hall.

He will take over from me with my blessing or without it and I no longer care to ease the transition.

Shay stirs on the bed, and this is enough to make me fly back to him, not wanting to miss a precious moment of consciousness.

But he has not woken, only turned over fitfully in his sleep, and I hesitate between touching him and leaving him be, knowing how uncomfortable he is with my touch at the moment, but also how uncomfortable it would make him to know I’d denied myself.

Ultimately, I take his hand in mine, pull it into my lap, and he stills.

The breath catches in my lungs for a moment, certain that he’s gone, but then his chest rises and falls again, peaceful this time, and I wonder if perhaps some part of him is still soothed by me.

I hope so. I would do anything to bring him even the slightest measure of comfort.

Crawling under the covers, I curl up beside him and bring his knuckles to my lips.

“I need you to come back to me, Shay,” I whisper against his skin, willing him to hear it, somehow, thinking it so hard my temples ache with the strain. “I can’t live without you, my love. Please come back to me.”

Shay

There’s a tree in the meadow now. I put it there for Haytham, and stack of pillows and blankets at the foot, in the shade, for when he comes back.

He’s never complained about the grass and things under us, but I know how he likes his comfort and this place is for _him_. A safe, cozy place in my mind for him to come to.

He’ll come back.

He has to come back.

I climb the tree to look out, far into the distance. Maybe I just need to find him. Maybe he’s been here the whole time.

A thump below startles me, and I look down to see…

 _Haytham_.

Sprawled out in the nest of pillows as though he fell out of the sky, fighting them off like he’s drowning in them.

And then he looks up, and meets my eyes, and everything goes still.

I fall out of the tree on top of him, laughter welling up in my throat as I wrap my arms around him, closing my eyes to feel him against me.

“Are you real?” I ask, terrified that he’s not, that I’ve lost my mind, that this is another dream where he’ll vanish as soon as I try to reach out to him.

“I’m as real as I’ve ever felt here,” Haytham says, and I can _feel_ him coming back with a rush, his surprise and his joy and his warmth, the weighted solidness of him. An anchor to hold onto even in the roughest sea.

He tastes exactly as I remember when I kiss him, and I half-know that he’s there in the real world, too, that if I came back to myself now I could touch him and hold him and kiss him from head to toe. And he’d let me without complaining even once, because he’s missed me as much as I’ve missed him.

But I’m not ready to come back yet. I need time. I need to heal.

“I’ll stay here,” Haytham says. “I’ll stay here for as long as you need me to.”

“Forever,” I say. I need him always, I can’t live without him. Haven’t been able to since the moment I met him.

“Forever,” Haytham agrees, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “I will _always_ be with you, and you know it. But you must wake up eventually. Promise me?”

I nod. I can promise that, I can feel the life coming back to me now that he’s here.

“Oh, Shay,” Haytham murmurs, pressing his forehead against mine, closing his eyes as he settles us deep into the pillows and pulls one of the fluffiest blankets over us. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’m not so easy to get rid of,” I say, and I want to sound cheerful and easy like I always do, never asking anything of Haytham, but just now I need him, I need more from him than I’ve ever asked before, and I don’t know _how_ to ask it.

“You do not need to hide your feelings from me. I’ve missed them so desperately, please don’t hold back now.”

A sob breaks free as he says it, wave after wave of want and need and fear and anger washing over me, tears stinging my eyes as I curl up against him. It’s too much, I’m asking too much of him when he’s been feeling like this, too, but I need to lean on him now, I need him to take my weight.

Haytham rolls us over so I’m lying on his chest, stuffing a pillow behind his head and wrapping his arms around me, letting me rest there.

I feel like I could cry for weeks, but it eases back faster than that as Haytham seeps back into my thoughts, curling around me until I can’t tell where I end and he begins, like we’re one person.

This is how it’s meant to be. I can’t feel out the edges of my own mind anymore, and I know that’s because something’s given way in Haytham, something he’s been holding back, and I’ve never been more grateful to him than I am now, for letting me in.

“I love you,” he says.

The meadow ripples around the two of us, and when I look up again there’s three walls and a roof, a cozy little…

 _Summer house_ , Haytham supplies. I wouldn’t have known what to call it, but it’s like a tiny cottage with one wall missing, filled to the brim with soft things and cozy like our bedroom.

My tree grows in the middle of it, stretching up through the roof, twistier and more gnarled than before.

 _Easier to climb_ , Haytham smiles at me. _I’m not getting any younger_.

Beyond the missing wall the meadow overflows with blooms, things we won’t see until the summer now, all my favourites.

It’s still moving and shifting around us as I curl up against Haytham, among enough pillows to furnish all of New York.

Haytham, finally, is _moving in_.

Making this space our home, spreading it between both of our minds.

He does love me. I never doubted, I always knew he would, that he was made to do it just as surely as I was made to love him.

But knowing it right down in the marrow of my bones and the pit of my stomach and the darkest corners of my mind is new, and I can’t remember happiness like this.

I doubt anyone’s ever been happy like this before.

Haytham hangs the map I have in the cabin of the _Morrigan_ on the wall and hums with satisfaction as he mentally straightens it.

“Forgive me,” he says. “I need the indoors.”

There’s nothing to forgive. I’ve wanted him to come and make this space _his_ for so long.

And now it’s _ours_.

Joy bubbles over in my chest and escapes as laughter, soft and bright and relieved.

“I have never loved anyone like I love you,” Haytham says, so open and casual, like he’s noting something about the weather.

“I haven’t, either,” I murmur, rubbing our noses together.

I have loved other people and I won’t pretend otherwise, but Haytham is different.

Haytham kisses me without even thinking about it first, rolling us over again and pushing me down into the pillows, letting me feel a little of his weight on top of me, still careful.

I wish our clothes away to feel his skin against mine, humming happily into his mouth and in no hurry to do anything else. Haytham’s thought a thousand times that he could kiss me for hours and I’ve always been so impatient with him.

This time, I won’t be. He can kiss me for _days_ if he likes.

“I won’t try your patience,” he says. “I just got you back, I think I ought to be allowed to spoil you.”

I want to spoil him too, fingers grabbing a greedy handful of his hair as he kisses his way down my body, so eager and brimming with love, the thought of pleasing me the only thing in his mind as he dips his tongue into my navel and makes me laugh.

He likes it when he can hear me and I don’t hold back, not here where it’s just the two of us. The hundred thousand pillows dampen the sound, but Haytham hums happily as he puts his mouth to me, searing pleasure flashing through me like a bolt of lightning.

He’s gotten good at this, a quick study if ever there was one.

 _I’ve done it dozens of times now_ , he thinks, indignant, and I can’t help grinning.

Aye. Haytham’s good to me. No wonder I couldn’t imagine living without him.

This isn’t real and I only have to hold out as long as I want to before I let myself crest the peak, spilling down Haytham’s throat and feeling some more of myself—or him—come back to me as he kisses me after, the taste of me on his tongue, a familiar mix that I love with my whole heart.

“And now I _will_ kiss you for hours,” Haytham murmurs against my lips. “Until you’re ready to wake up for me.”

I sigh and give in to him, warm and loved and happy.

We have things to do as soon as I’m well enough to roll out of bed, but there’s no harm in enjoying this until then.

 _I love you_ , Haytham thinks, calm and steady.

I love him, too.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter after this!! will push to finish it by Christmas, turns out I was less well than I thought 😶

Haytham

The moment Shay spots James Cook on the docks I feel a spike of bubbling pleasure that reminds me of an eager pup wagging its tail at another dog, excited to see it.

I instantly wish I’d travelled with him instead of stopping to patch the Colonial Rite back together after just a few days of my absence while we both recovered our strength.

_Don’t be jealous_ , Shay thinks at me. _He does look very handsome though_.

I can’t tell if he’s teasing me or if he’s simply desperate enough to consider Cook an acceptable partner in my absence.

_You’re so uncharitable to him_ , Shay thinks, and gives Cook an especially warm greeting to make up for it, even though the man cannot hear my thoughts and therefore will not be wounded by them.

He is a gifted sailor and navigator and while his personality is not precisely to my taste—not least of all because it involves coveting Shay—I can admit that I understand what Shay sees in him. A kindred spirit in a way I am not, with my complete lack of knowledge when it comes to ships and sailing.

I have often wondered if _that_ is why Shay is my soulmate. The universe trying to compensate for the fact that it allowed the son of a pirate to grow up without ever learning how to run a ship.

The more I think about it, the more sense it makes that on the surface we couldn’t be more different, but at our cores we are the same, with the same closely-held beliefs, the same questions, and the same drive to do what is good and right. Between the two of us, we make a whole.

_Why does he want you to be careful around Anticosti?_

_Nothing to worry about_ , Shay thinks, though the series of images of wrecked ships that he sends immediately after betrays him.

I raise a mental eyebrow. I trust Shay, of course, I know he is far and away the best sailor in the Order and I do not doubt his skills at all, but…

_But you’re worried_ , Shay thinks, soothing. _It’s all right. I’ve been there before, I know where every wreck and every rock is._

A pang of something I can’t quite identify comes along with the thought. Sorrow, perhaps, and a twist of anxiety, the sensation of feeling suddenly very small.

Of course. Anticosti _is_ de La Vérendrye’s territory, after all, and he and Shay never got along.

But I suspect Shay would have _liked_ to get along with him.

_Aye_ , Shay thinks, still sad. _I would have_.

The Colonial Brotherhood seems to be built entirely of people who utterly failed to see Shay for what he was, what he was worth. To think that if a single one of them showed any sort of critical thinking skills, I might never have met him.

_See? All worked out for the best in the end._

Shay is so relentlessly cheerful that it might be unbearable if it didn’t have the effect of cheering me up as well.

_I miss you,_ he adds as his ship gets underway.

This is all the excuse I need to drop everything and go to him. The Precursor matter is obviously the priority, it was what the Colonial Rite was set up for in the first place.

The fact that seeing to it first hand will bring me closer to Shay is merely a happy coincidence.

_I’m a bad influence on you_ , Shay thinks, laughter echoing in his mind.

_You are a balancing influence on me, and besides… I would like to see another site._

Shay knows how complicated my feelings on Precursor matters are, and has been dutifully protecting me from having to be involved too closely, even though he himself is so deeply entangled.

But I must support him, and I must find some closure for myself, too.

_Could use some company on the journey_ , Shay encourages, gently-gently as always. He is gentle with me in ways I would never have thought to ask and as every day goes by I am more grateful for him.

I am already on the road by the time he retires to his cabin for a few hours of sleep, reconciling long-neglected accounts of Templar stores, commodity notes, and cash on hand. Shay’s mind is filled with vivid fantasies of falling asleep half on top of me, a pillow tucked under him to take my place—an unsatisfactory substitute, I’m pleased to see.

_Miss you_ , Shay thinks, half-asleep already.

I bask in the warm glow of his feelings for me a moment before turning back to my work, confounded by the rocking of the carriage and the swinging of the lantern but determined to make headway.

_How did you get a hundred and four out of eight-seven and twenty-seven?_ Shay interrupts perhaps half an hour later.

I squint at the figures I’ve just noted down.

_It is…_

No. No, it is not. Eighty-seven plus twenty-seven is a hundred and fourteen.

In my head, a half-asleep Shay chuckles.

_I’m not accustomed to doing this myself_ , I think back. _Someone who will remain unnamed killed my treasurer._

Guilt and unease hit me hard, Shay’s mind shrinking back from my own, and it’s all I can do to soothe that I didn’t intend to hurt him by saying it, that I’m tired, that I do not blame him for Smith’s death and frankly, I do not miss the man, who was at best a drunk and at worst a boor.

_Gist liked him_ , Shay thinks, still small. He’s already under so much stress and all I’ve managed to do is add to it.

_Gist has questionable taste in companions_ , I think.

_Gist likes me_ , Shay points out, and although he might well have been insulted, there is laughter in his voice.

I love him. I love him for his endless resilience, for his absolute refusal to let anything defeat him, and for letting me borrow that strength all this time.

When I returned to the colonies I was more than ready to die in the first foolish, doomed errand I could find to throw myself into, and then there was Shay. Sweet, kind, cheerful Shay who was so excited I was alive that I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him by dying.

_I didn’t know_ , Shay murmurs, like a brush of fingers through my hair.

_I didn’t want you to know. That was why I pushed you out when we first met_.

Warmth like a down blanket envelops me and suddenly I am in Shay’s bed in his cabin, held close to his chest, steel-band arms keeping me still. It isn’t real, but as always, it feels more real than being alive.

The scent of lilacs curls its way to my nose as I close my eyes, and I know that if I open them again we’ll be in our meadow, in the summer house, propped up against the tree and drowning in pillows enough to furnish all of New York.

The thought makes me smile.

_Good_ , Shay thinks, firm. His rush of guilt is subsiding, but I still have the strength to smooth the sharp edges of it, file them away until they are as blunt and soft as butter and the burden melts into nothingness.

I cannot pluck every dark thought out of Shay’s head, nor can he do this for me, but we can ease and shape and redirect, light a lantern in murky corners and chase away the shadows with it.

The longer we know each other, the more we trust each other, the easier it is. Once upon a time I would have been afraid of being so influenced by another person, of letting them be so close to me that they could change my very thoughts like this, but I trust Shay.

I trust that Shay wants me to be happy more than even I want it, and I trust that he knows right from wrong more clearly than I can ever hope to. He, in turn, trusts that I want him alive and safe more than anything, anything in the world.

_Take a nap_ , he advises softly. _I’ll do the accounts for you when this is all taken care of_.

My outright hatred of sums and figures makes that offer a very tempting one indeed. Between us, Shay is the gifted mathematician and my own calculations are only ever in the vaguest possible terms—I’ve never had any use for more than simple arithmetic.

_Congratulations on your new position as treasurer_ , I think. _Formalities to follow_.

Shay half-voices an objection, but we are both asleep before I can address it.

Shay

“Or…”

_I can’t believe you’re about to suggest this_.

“You could come with me,” I say, barely holding back a broad grin from Captain Cook.

His eyes light up like I’ve offered him all the stars in the sky.

_No need to be jealous_ , I think, soothing Haytham’s spark of unhappiness.

I won’t pretend I don’t like that he’s jealous of me, that he wants me badly enough to be possessive, but there’s no danger here. I wouldn’t trade him for anyone, no matter how excited they get about maps and charts and ships.

_I find the Morrigan very exciting_ , Haytham thinks. _I like seeing you happy, and you are always happy on your ship._

“I wanted to say when we met before,” Cook speaks up as we’re pushing off. “Congratulations on your engagement. I hope Master Kenway knows how lucky he is to have caught your attention.”

“He’d better,” I tease. “Or you might find me stowed away on the _Pembroke_ one of these days.”

“Captain Cormac, you’ve an open invitation to my cabin,” Cook says, and then his eyes widen as he realises what it sounds like.

“I… I only meant… I hope you understand…”

“I do understand, Captain. James,” I say, holding his gaze.

I hate to break a heart and I want to keep a friend. “He’s my soulmate,” I explain. “I mean, my real soulmate.”

“You can hear his thoughts, then?” Cook asks, that same spark of discovery lighting up his eyes, wonder written all over his face.

It’s a handsome face and I want him to understand that I _could_ have loved him. That he’s worthy of it, more than worthy.

He’s just not Haytham, and that’s not his fault.

“Aye.” I nod.

Cook grimaces. “Better you than I, Shay.”

I laugh, and I couldn’t have stopped myself even if I wanted to. He’s not wrong, Haytham would’ve sent most people mad.

_Excuse me_ , Haytham thinks pointedly. _I’ll have you know I’m very charming. An utter delight as a constant companion. You’ve said so yourself_.

I laugh again, feeling Haytham’s laughter in my own chest.

Cook goes pink.

“Did he hear that?” he asks.

“Not exactly,” I assure him. “And he won’t think anything of it. Now, let’s catch up with this bastard before he gets away.”

It takes all my focus to get every last knot out of the _Morrigan_ —she’s fast, but Chevalier’s head start makes it a close-run thing, and when the _Gerfaut’s_ sails come into view on the horizon a thrill of victory shudders through me.

Haytham hovers at the back my mind, this time like a steadying hand at my collar. Solid and real as if he were there, a soothing kiss dropped onto my shoulder, a reassuring squeeze before he sends me into battle.

Chevalier puts up the fight I expect him to and tossing him into the cold water below gives me more satisfaction than I think is decent, years and years and _years_ of his cruel dismissal even when I wanted so badly for him to like me, to see me as a kindred spirit, a fellow sailor. Maybe even as someone he could train and mentor and work alongside.

But he’d never so much as been polite, let alone kind, and I’d seen kindness now. From the Finnegans, and Monro, and Gist, and Weeks, and Haytham, and Cook.

_You are practically the sole beneficiary of my kindness_ , Haytham thinks.

_Oh aye, me and every sorry-looking child you come across. They play you for a fool_.

_You say this as though you don’t practically run an orphanage out of Fort Arsenal_.

I laugh, but all I want right now is to collapse into his arms. I know I can’t, we still have such a long way to go, but I _want_ to.

_Chin up_ , Haytham thinks, and I automatically raise my chin a few degrees like he’s holding a knuckle under it. _The Pembroke might bring you a surprise_.

Joy blossoms in my chest at Haytham’s hint, and as soon as the _Pembroke’s_ sails appear in the distance I can’t wipe the smile off my face.

Cook stands beside me, chatting amicably, and for a moment the task ahead doesn’t seem so impossible, but it does seem a hundred times more important.

I have things worth protecting now. James Cook, who still wants to be friends even though I’ve had to let him down gently. Gist, who’s been first mate for so long I wouldn’t know how to exist without him.

Haytham, my soulmate, love of my life, impossible and infuriating and beautiful and kind. _Mine_. My own.

I can’t stop smiling as he steps onto the deck, calm and collected as ever, standing tall and looking just a little more handsome than usual.

_I still can’t believe you offered to fund his future expeditions_ , he thinks, mental eyebrow raised.

_You’re the one who made me treasurer. If I have to do the accounts, I get a say in where the money goes. Besides, look how useful he is. Good to keep a man like that on-side._

_You can’t just keep him as a pet,_ Haytham huffs.

_You keep Thomas Hickey as a pet and that’s not what I’m doing. I haven’t got all that many friends._

Sadness. Haytham doesn’t have any friends either.

_You have me_ , he thinks, soft, reaching out like an offered hand.

_And you me_ , I promise.


	10. Chapter 10

Haytham

Shay crumples as soon as we are behind closed doors and his pain runs so deep that it takes all of my strength not to succumb to it myself.

He muffles his sobs against my chest, knowing he cannot appear weak in front of his crew no matter how badly-shattered his heart may be.

All I can do at first is hold him, tug him into the bed, push him down onto the mattress and wrap my arms around him, pressing my weight against him in a desperate attempt to wring every last drop of comfort out of myself and pour it into him.

Liam O’Brien’s death feels like a sucking chest wound to _me_ , the pain it causes Shay must be unbearable and for a moment I worry he might die of it, or that the connection between us might die again, broken because I have led him down a path that ended in killing a man he had loved since he was a babe in arms.

But it is not my pain that needs soothing and so I endure it, and the uncertainty of it, until he finally passes out from exhaustion, into a hopefully-dreamless sleep.

I keep watch, guarding him from any force that might trouble him, and if Gist interrupts for anything less than the ship being on fire I may shoot him.

But thankfully for his own sake, he does not, and many hours later as the long fingers of the dawn creep under the curtains into the perpetually-darkened cabin, I feel a tug on my mind.

Shay is not awake, but he _is_ dreaming. And he wants me to join him.

Exhausted, sore, still cold to my bones and quite eager to be with him again, I settle down with my forehead pressed to his and close my eyes, waiting for sleep to take me.

When it finally does, I am on the docks in Boston. But not now, and not the few years ago when I last saw them.

On a ship in the harbor, a small boy with charmingly red cheeks and auburn hair, brighter than Shay’s is now, waves and calls to me.

As soon as I go to move, I find that I too am a boy, not more than ten years old.

The sheer strength of Shay’s imagination never ceases to amaze me. It would take a lifetime to learn every corner of his mind, so vast and full that I wouldn’t think to look for most of it.

I run up to the ship and clamber over the side, finding Shay on the otherwise-deserted deck.

He darts in, kisses my cheek—making me blush even in his own dream—and then runs off, up the ropes like a monkey, his hands and feet confident as he raced away from me, further and further until the swell of joy I’d felt at seeing him begins to fade, worry that he’d rather not be near me welling up.

“Follow me,” he insists, calling down.

This is a dream, but my dream-self is no more confident in the rigging than my real self, and the climb up to the crow’s nest where Shay has already ensconced himself, grinning down at me as I make each cautious inch of my climb up to him.

When I arrive, there are pillows everywhere.

“Those are for you,” Shay says, so young and carefree. I have never seen him like this, and I have never been like this myself around him, ten years old again and in desperate need of a friend.

I would have given anything to have had Shay all this time. To have grown up alongside him and loved him so wholly and fully that we were one person by the time we were old enough to understand what it meant to be so close to another that it was difficult to see where the boundaries were, and more difficult still to care.

But that had been another man’s place, and that man was gone, and Shay was showing me something rare and precious.

“Your father’s ship,” I say a moment later, looking at it again with renewed awe.

Yes, his father’s ship.

A place where he feels safe, like nothing in the world can hurt him, but also not the meadow, or the summer house.

Because he does not want this cracking open of his chest to take place somewhere that is all light and warmth and softness and sweetness, lest it ruin the peace for both of us.

No, that place is a sanctuary.

But this is a ship, and it can take us anywhere he wants it to go.

We make our own nest out of the pillows, Shay wriggling between them like he’s never known such luxury, and of course, at this age, he hasn’t. He’s never known to want it.

He was _happy_ , where I had more pillows than I could possibly use but no friends, no freedom, and only the small happinesses of attention from my father and the books that took me away to exactly the places Shay was visiting.

A caged bird, where Shay had soared free.

He rests his head on my shoulder and the pang of grief for a past I never had fades.

I have Shay, and we have a future together.

“I would’ve liked to know you all my life, too,” Shay says. “But I don’t regret this. Not one bit.”

_Because you couldn’t have loved me like you do if we were any different than we are now_.

Shay values my love so highly. So much more highly than I ever thought anyone could.

I value his just as much, and I hope he knows.

_Of course I do_ , he thinks as the sky turns to pinks and oranges around us, the sun setting on the day.

And then he begins to speak, in earnest, and the scenes of his life play out in the burning sky, sometimes the vague wisps of clouds and sometimes as if projected by a magic lantern, larger than life and illuminating the encroaching night, all the memories he’s never had cause to show me.

Liam is in many of them, as is his father, as are all the other Assassins he’s been forced to kill over the past few years.

My hand tightens around his as I watch, taking in these hidden parts of Shay as the gift they are, the final seal on his absolute trust of me.

By the time he’s finished, dozing on my shoulder, his memories are a part of me.

I wonder if we are missed in the waking world yet, but time in dreams is elastic and however much sleep Shay will allow himself must be good for him. Sleep is always healing, and this shared sleep especially so.

I rise, still holding his hand, and tug him out onto the mast, right to the swaying tip, surer of my footing now.

Shay would not let me fall.

We both leap into the cold, dark ocean below, Shay’s faith unshaken and mine firmer than ever, and land in my childhood bedroom.

He looks around in wonder, heading straight for the bookcase filled with volumes, most of which I will never read. He runs his fingers along the spines reverently, so aware of the knowledge contained within, and always so eager for more of it.

I need not have been Shay’s soulmate to woo him. I would only have needed a decent library and a comfortable chair for him to work his way through it from, and he would have been mine.

Shay laughs, still exploring, excited to be in this space he has never visited, still so clear in my own mind.

He peers out the window, and then waves at someone below. I fly to stand beside him and see the neighbours—all of them—looking up at it.

Looking at Shay, and me, and watching as he takes my hand and presses them both to the glass.

_He’s happy_ , Shay shows them. _He’s happy and loved exactly as he is_.

“Imagine being afraid of a pirate,” Shay says aloud, turning away from the window, dismissing the children who weren’t allowed to associate with me when I really was this age.

Imagine indeed.

“I thought you preferred to be called a privateer,” I say, following him as he sits on the end of the bed.

“Not when I’ve just found out how exciting you think pirates are.” He grins at me.

I could hardly find Shay more exciting than I do, pirate, privateer, or otherwise.

He drags me up the bed and under the covers, and by the time we’re settled we’ve both grown into adulthood again, exactly as we are in the real world, though with rather less clothing.

Shay’s gentle fingers trace a circle on my hip, sleep catching up to him even in this world. I am putting a strain on him, bringing him into my mind, but I can feel that he doesn’t want to leave.

I want to give him this place as he’s given me his father’s ship. To share everything of myself with him.

This too is a sanctuary, but I have never known the freedom he knows.

“Come sailing with me,” Shay says, catching that thought. “Just for a bit. We should check to be sure there’s no way into the ruins of the temple, at least. That no one can stumble across it.”

He’s right, and what’s more, I want to stay with him. On his ship, where he is at once at home and free.

I would never cage him, not for anything, and so I must learn to fly as he does.

“Even if there aren’t so many pillows?” Shay grins.

“The pillows can be arranged,” I say, but I would sleep on a dirt floor for the rest of my life if that was what I had to do in order to keep Shay near.

I have no desire to be separated from him. None at all. I think I will need him within arm’s reach for quite some time yet.

“I won’t leave you,” Shay whispers. “Not for anything.”

“And I won’t lose you,” I murmur, reaching out to stroke his hair even as he drifts off. “Not for anything.”

Shay

When I close my eyes I can hear the waves lapping against the shore, smell the scent of wildflowers on the air, and feel the heat of Haytham’s body against mine, shaded by the boughs of the tree overhead.

“Can’t believe you found a place like this.”

Our meadow, in the flesh. Not quite exactly like the one in our mind, but I can already feel it shifting and changing to match.

I’d never thought to hear the sea from it, but now I can. A natural harbor, just deep enough for the _Morrigan_ to dock.

“Well, I’d been looking for an estate for some time,” Haytham says, leaning over me and tilting my chin up, pressing a sound kiss to my lips that tingles all the way down to my toes, making them curl. “It’s high time we made a home together.”

_Oh_.

My heart feels too big for my chest, pressing against my lungs and making it hard to breathe.

Haytham had told me he had something to show me and had handed me a chart, but wouldn’t send me an image of what we were looking for until we got there.

We could still surprise each other from time to time.

“I think building ourselves a little summer house will be the first order of business, don’t you? So we can escape the _Morrigan_ for a few hours when we come to see how the rest of the place is progressing.”

_The number of unspeakably filthy things I can do to you in your cabin is severely limited_ , he thinks, kissing me again, climbing on top of me. Laughter passes between us as easily as kisses, and Haytham may not _mean_ to show me all those filthy things, but they slip through anyway, and soon warm arousal pools in the pit of my belly and I can feel Haytham’s, too, glowing low and warm.

I kiss him again, rolling us both over in the long grass, the midday sunshine warming my back as we leave the shade of the tree behind and kiss and touch like teenagers in love for the first time.

It isn’t the first time for either of us, but it is the last. I’m planning on growing very old with Haytham, and kissing him like this always.

His fingers thread through my hair and he looks up at me like I’m the only thing in the world right now.

_Oh, but you are_ , he thinks, a smile in his heart. _The only thing I care about, at any rate_.

And it’s not true—he cares about so many things, and so many people, and about doing good and right and this is why it’s so easy to love him.

“Can we stay a while?” I ask, looking around at the perfect meadow swaying around us, wildflowers tickling my hand where it’s digging into the dirt below—the real dirt, the scent of it sticking in my throat as I wonder at having Haytham like this, so open even in the waking world.

“We’re staying forever,” Haytham promises. “Though at some point I will insist on rooms fit for pillows.”

He can have all the pillows he wants, as long as he’s willing to share.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We got to the end! Thank you so much for coming on this journey with me, I've had a wonderful time and I hope you have, too :D


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